Desperate Dictator Housewives - the Lady Macbeth syndrome

Interesting article from Ghanaian writer and politician Elizabeth Ohene for the BBC about the nature of the desperate dictator housewife. Check out what she has to say here - pretty much in a nutshell what I have been writing about with my series.

Some very good comments were made summing up the biblical origins of this phenomenon:

While working with refugees from the Sudan, I got into a friendly but serious debate about women's rights in Africa. I noted that women should have the chance to rule African countries as it was the men who had plundered their wealth through corruption, and it was men who started and fought the wars that brought Africa so much insecurity and tyranny. They stood horrified and said very seriously, "Oh no, they did no such things! Their wives made them do it!" It seems in many parts of the world that women are still viewed as an Eve like character, tempting holy men with their apples and causing sin where before there was none.

and

Isn't it always the case that in a man's world women are blamed about everything that goes wrong? Very rarely good things men do are attribited to their wives' influence. This has been the case since the times of Justinian and Theodora. She is remembered as the "whore" who seduced him, rather than the woman who influenced him to pass laws punishing rapists.

Now, with this in mind, just think about the disparate legacy and lingering images that remain of Bill and Hillary Clinton...