AHC: A Female Dictator

MasterSanders

MasterSanders

I'm sure this has been done before, but it's worth doing it again. :p

Your challenge: have a woman come to power as Head of State, or Head of Government, as the case may be, and become an autocrat. You can have any PoD past 1900. A monarch is allowed, but not preferred.

Bonus points if she is not Eva Peron. :rolleyes:

2x points if she is from the military.
 

Delta Force

Banned
Perhaps the wife or daughter of a dictator could rise to power if her family holds significant power or otherwise has a cult of personality around them. Something like this is being set up in Central Asia, where many of the leaders only have daughters. Kazakhstan isn't really a dictatorship though, so Uzbekistan is the closest.
 

Revolutionary Avocado

Benazir Bhutto, especially if she has the support of the security establishment, could become one relatively easily. She wouldn't be all-powerful, but the PPP integrated with the military establishment could make a very powerful one-party state. Say, a TL where her father is never overthrown and she takes power when he dies of old age?
 

Killer300

I actually literally did a threat on this that ended up being shut down because someone resurrected it.:p

But actually, this has already happened, like a case with China where a woman worked her way up to, I think, be Empress of one of the Chinese states.
 

RPW@Cy

This is OTL, surely? The Emergency in India, when Indira Gandhi basically suspended the constitution, staged mass arrests of political opponents and ruled by decree surely counts? For that, matter, and in the same part of the world Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh has hardly been a model democrat.

If you want other candidates, then the easiest way is probably to arrange for the president of one of the more dynastic republics like Syria or North Korea to only have daughters. This may well be about to happen in Kazakhstan, where president Nazarbaev only has daughters and at least one of them is fairly openly being groomed to succeed him.
 

CthulhuFhtagn

Banned
......Have we not already had one of those? IIRC, the Indian PM was pretty damn close to being a dictator back in the 70s.
 

Delta Force

Banned
Killer300 said:
I actually literally did a threat on this that ended up being shut down because someone resurrected it.:p

But actually, this has already happened, like a case with China where a woman worked her way up to, I think, be Empress of one of the Chinese states.
Click to expand...

A woman also became the leader of the largest pirate gang in China after her husband died, if something like that counts.
 

David T

Leaving aside monarchs:

You can argue that Indira Gandhi was a dictator for awhile. (True, she ultimately held free elections in which she was defeated. But dictatorships can be temporary--as of course were the Roman ones from which the word dictator is derived.)

Women who conceivably could have become dictators:

Jiang Qing if the Gang of Four had prevailed?

Ana Pauker if Stalin had sided with her against Gheorghiu-Dej? (Unlikely, I know.)

And no, *not* Eva Peron. Had she lived and her husband died in an accident or been assassinated, there might have been much working-class sentiment for her to succeed him, but the Argentine military would never have allowed it. (It was because of pressure from the military, as well as her own failing health, that Juan Peron backed off from the idea of having her as his running mate in 1951.)
 
Asami

Asami

Banned
Kim Jong-un and his wife have only daughters, leading to his eldest child, a daughter, ascending as the leader of North Korea when he dies.

There you go.
 

The Cosmonaut Cat

Banned
Sakura_F said:
Kim Jong-un and his wife have only daughters, leading to his eldest child, a daughter, ascending as the leader of North Korea when he dies.

There you go.
Click to expand...
You don't need some hypothetical future scenario. Kim Jong Un's aunt, Kim Kyong Hui was by some suspected of being a potential successor to Kim Jong Il. Just have a POD that results in Un never ascending the throne or loosing power and you may get this.
 

MalcontentRex

Banned
She was already said but, depending on how you define "dictator", Benazir Bhutto may have qualified as one. I believe Pakistan has long had undemocratic "blasphemy" and similar laws on the books. I'm not sure how strongly she enforced them.
 

politicalnomad

I'll nominate Elena Ceausescu from Communist era Romania who was even more hated than Nicolae, and probably crazier as well. The money that could have been made by selling lottery tickets to be the one who got to pull the trigger on those two is enormous.
 

Johnrankins

Imelda Marcos had a shot if her husband dies before he is ousted. She was popular enough in her area to be elected to the Philippine House after she was pardoned.
 

Blair

The Cosmonaut Cat said:
You don't need some hypothetical future scenario. Kim Jong Un's aunt, was by some suspected of being a potential successor to Kim Jong Il. Just have a POD that results in Un never ascending the throne or loosing power and you may get this.
Click to expand...

Well she does look the part

2012092800510_0.jpg
 
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