The Global Status of Women’s Political Leadership

Linda Robinson

Topic: The Global Status of Women’s Political Leadership
Date: Tuesday, October 7, 2025
Place: Irondequoit Country Club: 4045 East Ave. [14618]
Time: 6:00 Cocktails; 7:00 Dinner; 8:00 Speaker Presentation followed by Q and A
Cost: $55 per person ($58 if paying online), buffet style. Cash Bar
Dinner: Buffet style – 2 protein options, 1 vegetarian option

***Registration Policy: For reservations, please email MemberServices@WACROC.org. Mail your
check for the dinner[s] to: WACR, PO Box 25462, Rochester, NY 14625 no later than September 30.

Elevating the status of women and girls has been demonstrated to advance global prosperity, stability, and security, yet the journey toward gender equality has been marked by fitful and incremental gains.

Women’s political representation and leadership remain the area of greatest lag, despite notable success in some countries. The Project on Women’s Political Leadership examines the factors that account for progress as well as the impediments that are stalling progress. In addition to ongoing structural barriers and persistent bias, gains in women’s leadership and representation have been significantly affected by the worldwide erosion in democratic norms, rising authoritarianism, and growing online gender-based violence fueled by increasingly powerful artificial intelligence.

Linda Robinson is senior fellow for women and foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) where she writes about women’s political and economic leadership, the relationship between gender equality and democracy, technology-facilitated violence, and current international affairs. She was previously a senior international researcher and director of the Center for Middle East Public Policy at the RAND Corporation. She has also been a fellow at the Wilson Center, the Merrill Center at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and the Nieman Foundation at Harvard. A former foreign correspondent for U.S. News & World Report and senior editor at Foreign Affairs, Ms. Robinson provides frequent commentary on international affairs and U.S. foreign policy. Her books include Masters of Chaos, a New York Times bestseller; Tell Me How This Ends, a Foreign Affairs bestseller and a New York Times Notable Book of 2008; One Hundred Victories, about Afghanistan; and Intervention or Neglect, about Central America. She received the Gerald R. Ford Prize for Reporting on National Defense and the Maria Moors Cabot Prize for reporting on Latin America. She served as Chair of the U.S. Army War College Board of Visitors and in other government advisory positions and has testified before Congress on multiple topics in-cluding special operations, the Iraq war, and the Middle East. She is writing a book about the current cohort of women political leaders.