124
EQUALITY, WOMEN AND POWER
journalist came to me and said ‘Madam, you have always the same suit on’. I said ‘Yes, that’s not a problem for me. Is it a problem for you?’ And he answered that in fact it was a problem for him, because it gave the impression that the photographs were always the same, and old. I always wore a broach, so I told him, OK, I will give you something new: I will change the broaches’.” When I asked for her best piece of advice, she didn’t hesitate even for a second before answering: “Mentorship is very important. I will give you an example. In the Netherlands we have mayors who are not elected, but who are appointed by the King. The prepatory work is done by the Commissioners of the King, that is, the governors from the provinces, and that was one of my tasks. But I had a lot of trouble finding female mayoral candidates. I was trying to find a tactic to improve that. The best candidates for becoming mayors were the local counsellors. They serve a period of 4 years, and in the third year men counsellors came to me as Commissioner of the Queen and asked me if they could postulate themselves as candidates to become mayors. I answered they had to survive at least one period as counsellors, and then in their second term, after six or seven years in office, they could come to me and if I thought they were qualified I would put them on the list.Women hardly ever came.They did not even come in their second period. They came in their third term, after eight to ten years, when they realized that it was their last term, and worried about what they would do afterwards. I wanted to change that situation. So I asked all the female counsellors of my province to meet two or three female majors from other provinces, in the hope that they could see how nice it was to become a mayor, and then would come to me