Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had scripted history when she won the nomination of the Democratic party to be the presidential candidate, the first woman to win the nomination of a major political party. Her nomination had brought a woman closer than ever to be the first female Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful nation in the world.
However, the election of Clinton's rival Republican candidate Donald Trump as the 45th President of the US and of Portugal's former premier Antonio Guterres as the ninth UN Secretary General dashed hopes for women shattering the highest glass ceilings in both the US government and the UN.
Before Clinton, there was a long history of women who have tried to run for America's presidency. Over 200 women have sought the presidency since Victoria Woodhull, the American leader of the woman's suffrage movement who was the first woman to run for president in 1872.
Also Read
Most of the 200 women were minor third-party candidates who got very little traction. But with Clinton, the possibility of a woman being elected as US President had appeared more strong than ever before in the nation's 240-year old history.
Trump's victory not only stunned the US and the world, it defied all major predictions by pollsters and media houses who had prognosticated Clinton's win.
A Clinton win had promised not only the undeniable
shattering of the "glass ceiling", but a victory over the aggressive platform of her Republican opponent, that galvanised voters' resentments about perceived privilege and unleashed alarmingly unbridled displays of bigotry and chauvinism, it said.
The elections for the UN Secretary General this year saw an unprecedented level of transparency and a high number of women candidates in the fray, including prominent names such as Director-general of UN cultural organization UNESCO Irina Bokova, Argentinian Foreign Minister Susana Malcorra, former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres and Moldova's former Foreign Minister Natalia Gherman.
WomanSG, an organisation that had been rallying for a woman Secretary General had said in a statement that the announcement by the Security Council that they have chosen a man for Secretary General "once again is a disaster for equal rights and gender equality."
"It is unfair to...Women...And represents the usual backroom deals that still prevail at the UN. There were seven outstanding female candidates and in the end it appears they were never seriously considered. This is an outrage," the origanisation had said.