TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
How did Queen Elizabeth II do it: Because she was a woman?
There is a belief that women make good leaders due to the fact that they score higher than men in most leadership skills.
Change Size
Members of the public observe a national moment of reflection in Westminster Hall to show their respect to the late Queen Elizabeth II at her coffin as it lies in state, at the Palace of Westminster in London on Sept. 18, 2022. (AFP/Sarah Meysonnier)
I
t is fair to say that everyone has heard of Queen Elizabeth II. Even my mother who was not highly educated had an opinion of the monarch.
She knows that Queen Elizabeth was the monarch and head of state of the United Kingdom and many other Commonwealth realms for more than 70 years. She is also aware the queen was the commander in chief of the British armed forces, a role vested in the sovereign of the UK under the British constitution.
There is no denying that Queen Elizabeth was the only British monarch most people in the UK and around the world had ever known. Indeed, Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor became the queen before the majority of world population was even born.
She had seen it all, from post-World War II austerity, in which she bought her wedding dress with World War II ration coupons, the decline of the vast British empire, the end of the Cold War, the UK’s entry into and subsequent withdrawal from the European Union, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the return of war to European soil with the Russia-Ukraine war.
However, in her long reign, she had also seen advanced development brought to the world by brilliant minds. She saw and enjoyed how the internet advanced and transformed people’s lives in the 21st century.
My mother may have known her better because I lived in the UK for many years to complete my education. I suspect that she read or watched a lot about the UK as a way to cope with missing me.
When the monarch died on Sept. 15 at the age of 96, my mother believed that the Queen had a good life because she has devoted her life to her people by remaining as the bastion of stability for many, many years.
