AHC: Get a Female Dictator into Power

Ellis MacVey

Donor
Okay, so your challenge here is incredibly simple yet pretty difficult: give a woman dictatorial power over a country. Absolute monarchs don't count. Bonus points if they have the necessary disposition and retain power for long enough to do some incredibly fucked up shit.
 

simplysupported47

The Gang of Four beat Hua and Deng in the post-Mao power struggle. Jiang Qing overshadows the rest of the Gang and becomes the paramount leader, leading Cultural Revolution dialed up 1000
 

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.)

Rosa Luxemburg if the Spartacists have prevailed? (But the uprising was unlikely to succeed, and anyway she hardly had dictatorial authority over the Spartacists.)
 
Sigismund Augustus

Sigismund Augustus

Well if we count leaders of Soviet puppet states, then I do believe both Tanu Tuva and Mongolia had female "supreme leaders". Both gained power after the death of their husbands and were in charge for a couple decades.
 

David T

Sigismund Augustus said:
Well if we count leaders of Soviet puppet states, then I do believe both Tanu Tuva and Mongolia had female "supreme leaders". Both gained power after the death of their husbands and were in charge for a couple decades.
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Are you referring to Anastasia Filatova? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastasia_Filatova No doubt she exercised considerable (and resented) behind-the-scenes power when her husband Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal was leader https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yumjaagiin_Tsedenbal but she was never anything like "supreme leader" nor did she succeed him when he was removed from office in 1984 (he didn't die until 1991, by which time Mongolia had become a multiparty state). None of the General Secretaries of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (or Prime Ministers) was a woman.

For Tannu Tuva you no doubt have Khertek Amyrbitovna Anchimaa-Toka in mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khertek_Anchimaa-Toka and as Chairwoman of the Little Khural she was nominal head of state in the same sense Kalinin was in the USSR but it was her husband Salchak Toka who "was General Secretary of the Tuvinian department of the CPSU from 1944 to 1973; previously, he was the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Tuvan People's Revolutionary Party and was the supreme ruler of the Tuvan People's Republic from 1932 until its annexation by the Soviet Union in 1944." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salchak_Toka At most she was his partner in power in the four years before the USSR annexed Tannu Tuvu. (He didn't die until long afterwards.)
 
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Magniac

Magniac

I'm sure there are plenty of other tyrannical family dynasties where this arguably did happen at times behind the scenes, kitchen cabal wise (Argentina, Formosa, the Philippines and South Vietnam spring to mind), but my feeling is when you dig down into all the competing sociological factors of authoritarianism across different cultures, having an actual female nation-state godhead goes against the path of least resistance.

Organised illiberalism is very masculine, because that's the easiest way to gang it out.
David T said:
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.)
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Very Controversial Thought; in the modern era, when it comes to leaders/contenders who've toyed with reversing or halting liberal democratic reforms, Aung San Suu Kyi and Winnie Mandela are/were as famous as any other proto- or aspiring- dictator working in that area.
 

GSD310

In Indonesia there’s the speculation that if Soeharto manages to survive the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-1998, he would eventually hand over the presidency to his daughter Siti Hardiyanti “Tutut” Rukmana.
 
Gukpard

Gukpard

I don't know if she had any dictatorial ambition, but maybe if the coup against her go terribly wrong, Isabel Perón could declare a state of emergency and run as a dictator until the end of her mandate.
isabel%20peron.jpg
 
Jonathan

Jonathan

The bombing in 1984 is linked to miners strike rather than the IRA, so Thatcher has all socialists arrested and any sympathisers.

She rules Britain in a state of emergency from 1984 until her death in 2013.
 

overoceans

Jonathan said:
The bombing in 1984 is linked to miners strike rather than the IRA, so Thatcher has all socialists arrested and any sympathisers.

She rules Britain in a state of emergency from 1984 until her death in 2013.
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Would that have been legally possible in the UK? Even in 1945, when the UK was still fighting World War II, Churchill was either unable or unwilling to cancel an election.

And why would Thatcher go berzerk against ATL socialists, when she wasn't having republican apologists arrested en masse in OTL?
 

David T

David T said:
Are you referring to Anastasia Filatova? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastasia_Filatova No doubt she exercised considerable (and resented) behind-the-scenes power when her husband Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal was leader https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yumjaagiin_Tsedenbal but she was never anything like "supreme leader" nor did she succeed him when he was removed from office in 1984 (he didn't die until 1991, by which time Mongolia had become a multiparty state). None of the General Secretaries of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (or Prime Ministers) was a woman.
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Mongolia did have a female titular "head of state" (the second nation to have a non-hereditary one after Tannu Tuva) Sükhbaataryn Yanjmaa. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sükhbaataryn_Yanjmaa But she was certainly no dictator. She got her job because she was the widow of Damdinii Sükhbaatar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damdin_Sükhbaatar From the late 1930's until 1984 the leaders of Mongolia were Khorloogiin Choibalsan and then Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal. No woman approached them in influence, then or later.
 

SeaBos

Svetlana Alliuyena (Stalin's daughter) could maybe do it but you'd need to change much of her personality and convince Stalin to groom her. Maybe Stalin learns from Lenin's death and the subsequent power struggle that he should have someone ready to replace him should he die. He eventually settles on his daughter as she is the only person he can trust and she takes over after his death.

In a White victory scenario, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, or Anastasia could end up succeeding their father, if primogeniture doesn't favor their younger brother Alexei. Perhaps after winning the Civil War a cadre of military officers decide that Alexei is too sickly and that one of the sisters would be better if they are keeping the the Tsar as a political institution. The new Tsarina is more politically astute than expected and manages to play the rest of the government off of each other, leading to a complex situation where she is the power behind the council that is supposed to be using her as a puppet.

Alternatively, Kim Jong-il dies almost immediately after succeeding his father and Kim Kyong-hui (his sister) is the first to seize control.
 
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