WHEN IT WAS TIME for the UN to elect a new secretary-general in 2016, I thought that a woman might be selected for the first time. When I mentioned this to a European ambassador, he told me that he was open to it—“as long as she is competent.” I relayed this comment to Jordan’s UN ambassador Dina Kawar, who had become a close friend. She rolled her eyes. How, she asked, could anybody seriously think that an unqualified woman might just slip through the cracks to become UN secretary-general? As Dina joked to me, “Are they afraid that some woman will say, ‘Oh, I was going to do my hair today,
...more
