Leadership Quote by Emma Bonino

Bonino’s sentence lands with the careful ambivalence of a politician trying to praise women while speaking inside a culture that still expects women to be explained. “Clear-headed” and “more creative” are power words: competence plus imagination, the two traits historically used to justify women’s participation in public life only when it can be framed as an asset to everyone else. It’s an egalitarian claim packaged as comparative advantage, the kind of argument that plays well in policy rooms where “rights” alone is treated as too ideological.

Then comes the pivot: “for this reason, sometimes, also more fragile.” The phrasing smuggles in a causal chain that’s doing a lot of work. Creativity becomes not just a strength but a liability; sensitivity is recoded as vulnerability. That “sometimes” is a political safety valve, a hedge against being accused of outright sexism, but it still reinforces a familiar trope: women’s excellence is conditional, and their authority must be tempered by presumed delicacy.

The subtext is less about biology than about social weather. In a political context like Bonino’s - European liberal politics shaped by battles over abortion, labor, and representation - “fragile” can read as an indictment of the pressure women absorb: scrutiny, double standards, the constant requirement to be exceptional and likable. Yet the quote doesn’t fully choose that interpretation; it leaves fragility hovering between structural harm and essentialist stereotype.

It works rhetorically because it mirrors how sexism often operates today: wrapped in compliments, softened by qualifiers, and still quietly disciplining the boundaries of who gets to seem “fit” for power.