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Comment by i_am_proteus | Hacker News Reader

>During the 1970s and 80s, she was one of the two most powerful women on earth (the other was was Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister of Great Britain).

Perhaps the authors are unfamiliar with Indira Gandhi (or Golda Meir).

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Or Gloria Steinem, or Sandra Day O’Connor, or Imelda Marcos, or any of a number of women who were outside of the authors apparent Eastern European bubble.

Gloria Steinem and Sandra Day O'Connor couldn't have their enemies arrested, much less assassinated. Gandhi, Meir, Ceausescu, and sometimes Thatcher could and did. Not sure about Marcos.

Her husband implemented martial law for many years. Yes, absolutely this happened.

Yes, and also he probably had Aquino assassinated (one of the last in more than 50 years of Marcos political assassinations), but I don't know what Imelda's personal level of authority was in that situation; I think of her more as a kept woman and PR spokesperson than a power broker --- though there are some credible accusations of having one of her political opponents arrested. Indira Gandhi, by contrast, instituted a "state of emergency" herself (almost the same thing as martial law), even if it wasn't for as long as Marcos, and Golda Meir led Israel in its occupation of Gaza and the West Bank and in the Yom Kippur War.

I think the author is more in a Euro-US-centric bubble rather than Eastern European. Adding the rest of Europe or the US would make no difference to the conclusion as it's unlikely any other woman would have fit the bill. Your first 2 examples are certainly not the kind of power referred to here. The reason Elena Ceausescu gets this distinction is because it is widely believed that she was the real decision maker in the dictator couple, contrary to how it worked in many other such cases of couples with absolute power.

And I'd venture to say that for that time period at least Romania had a far bigger geo-political significance for Europe and the Western world than the Philippines did for the same or for Asia.

Indira Ghandi and Jiang Qing were my two objections after reading that, though Jiang fell far earlier than Ghandi or Ceausescu. Major leaders of much larger countries.

Inspiring, famous, influential, and powerful are not synonyms. The Ceaucescus exercised a lot of raw power.

Surely Indira Gandhi with her authoritarian tendencies held more "raw power" than Thatcher, elected in a stable parliamentary democracy with proper rule of law.

Within Romania yes, but India dwarfs it geographically and demographically, and internationally I think Gandhi had a lot more influence.

Indira Gandhi was instrumental in the creation of a new country - Bangladesh - by waging a direct war with Pakistan. Not a small matter considering Bangladesh is the 8th most populous country in the world. This is in addition to influencing the second most populous country in the world (India).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Freedom_Honour

In a tiny country. Imelda Marcos exercised a similar level of power in a country >5x the size of Romania.

The fact that he threw in Margaret Thatcher (who was not a dictator, and thus didn’t have as have much raw power) kinda shows that the author was just pulling opinions out of thin air, or exaggerating for effect, rather than carefullly measuring ‘raw power’.

On the other hand, Tatcher was a world leader (behind Reagan and Gorbatsjov).

Her power to dictate the life of civilians in her country was less than that of dictators; her ability to influence the world beyond her country's borders far greater.

I think the point here is that Elena Ceausescu wasn't a world leader. Nobody is disputing Thatcher's importance.

In Romania certainly. Outside Romania?

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