First Female Presidents: Baumanis Grant Report from Ausra Park

Post-communist Europe has seen an impressive advance in women’s political leadership. Since 1999, a year when Prof. Dr. Vaike Vīķe-Freiberga became the first woman president elected in the region, within the span of the next two decades, women-led presidencies have “proliferated,” and by the summer of 2024 this region counts eleven countries with twelve women presidents. Such “firsts” not only carry critical political significance of having the ultimate political “glass ceiling” shattered in a history of a country, but it also holds and conveys important symbolism, particularly for the younger generations, of having the first woman head of state.

My longitudinal transnational comparative project examines symbolic and substantive gender representation effects that the election of the first women presidents in the post-communist Europe have had so far. The study includes five country cases, where the first women-led presidencies took place: Latvia (1999-2007), Lithuania (2009-2019), Kosovo (2011-2016), Croatia (2015-2020), and Estonia (2016-2021).

Having the honor of being awarded the 2023-2024 Baumanis Grant for creative projects by the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies, I was able to travel to Estonia and conduct a 1.5 month-long field research in Tallinn. The primary and crucial task of my fieldwork was to carry out in-person interviews with President Kersti Kaljulaid, her advisors, academics who research Estonia’s domestic politics, and political analysts and journalists who have written about the country’s presidential office and President Kaljulaid.

I was able to achieve my project’s goals almost to the full extent. It was a calculated choice to be in the field during the months of May until mid-June as the later summer months present a challenge given that many government officials go on vacations, while academics leave for conferences or conduct their own research when the school year ends. My calculated choice paid off for the most part: I was able to meet nearly all presidential advisors except for three. Given a very busy schedule of the President herself, it was certainly quite challenging to find a two-hour window, but in the end, I was successful and was granted an interview with the President.

A couple challenges that I have encountered during my fieldwork in Estonia was a share number of various political events, the largest of them being the Annual Lennart Meri conference and the European Parliamentary elections that took place in early June last year. Both events had an impact as this narrowed the availability times for several of my targeted interviewees (i.e., president’s former foreign policy advisors who come from, and return to, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs). Another challenge was accessing individuals who continue to be directly or indirectly involved in Estonian politics. Despite these challenges, I believe to have successfully accomplished the primary goal of my project—I was able to interview all advisees who were in Tallinn and available during my fieldwork in the country. I’m also deeply thankful for President Kaljulaid’s staff who gifted me two volumes of her speeches and a book (in Estonian) Vapilõvi by Daniel Vaarik.

With the field trip to Estonia concluded, I now look forward to take time for reflection and to begin writing a manuscript on the five selected women-led presidencies in post-communist Europe. In the upcoming months, I intend to present preliminary results of this research at various international and national professional conferences, and, ultimately, contribute to the literatures on gender in presidential studies, women in politics, and pan-Baltic/European area studies.