The careers of Sturgeon, Merkel and Ardern show how foolish it is to idealise leaders just for being womenNicola Sturgeon was always afraid of failure. But it was a very particular kind of failure she feared; one that follows a very particular kind of success. Living up to the fact of being Scotland’s first female first minister became, she writes in her new memoir, “almost an obsession”, which is arguably unhealthy but not unreasonable. To be the first woman (or indeed the first minority) in any field is to be uncomfortably aware of being on probation: the test case that sceptics will use to decide whether women in general can really hack it, but also the yardstick by which other women will judge whether representation actually makes a difference.You daren’t betray anything that looks like a sign of weakness, yet at the same time you’re endlessly under pressure to spill your guts on all the intimate stuff – miscarriage and menopause in Sturgeon’s case, pregnancy in high office for ...