Former Prime Minister of New Zealand JENNY SHIPLEY listens as former Prime Minister of Canada KIM CAMPBELL speaks yesterday at the KSG.

Despite considerable challenges, women can be highly effective leaders, two female former prime ministers told a standing-room-only crowd at the Kennedy School of Government on Monday.

The Right Honorable A. Kim Campbell of Canada and the Right Honorable Jenny M. Shipley of New Zealand spoke about perceptions of female leadership and the leadership roles the two have taken on since retiring from politics.

Campbell and Shipley are two of only 32 living females who have served as president or prime minister. They focused on correcting what they said were misconceptions for female leadership and also discussed the obstacles they had to overcome as females running for political offices.

Campbell challenged the perception of women leaders as overstepping their bounds.

“Men, who have been doing the job for so long, act in a certain way when making decisions,” she said. “Women come along and have the same qualities because those are the qualities of the job. But women are seen as violating gender roles.”

Shipley also recounted gender-based attacks levied against her.

“I do remember when I first went into politics, one of my competitors asked me, ‘Well, Jenny Shipley, who’s looking after your children?’ I don’t think many of my male colleagues have faced a similar question,” she said.

Campbell said she felt that her initial campaign, although victorious, was adversely affected by popularly held beliefs.

“When I was running for the leadership of the party after being Minister of Justice and Attorney General, it was as if I had done nothing because no issues stuck to me,” she said.

Shipley partially blamed what she labeled a conservative media for popular misconceptions of female leaders, and Campbell cited former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as a target of such biased media.

“I don’t think that Margaret Thatcher was any more opinionated than any other leader. She was more qualified than anyone else at the time, but that wasn’t the media focus,” Campbell said.

Some negative views have dissipated since the two prime ministers’ elections, the pair said.

“In New Zealand, men and women would not take a party seriously if it did not have a good gender—and increasingly racial—mix,” Shipley said. “It’s not about being politically correct; it’s just who we are.”

Campbell said she saw her election as a beacon of hope for girls.

“After I won, I remember one of my campaign leaders in tears and saying, ‘This is for my daughter,’” she said.