According to the science, he’s not wrong. Harvard Business Review reports that women actually outperform men on 17 of the 19 capabilities that make an exceptional leader, including resilience and championing change.

We also watch on in awe as Jacinda Ardern has dealt with atrocities across her country with the utmost strength and compassion, and as Sanna Marin takes over as prime minister of Finland, we can see why he believes countries led by women have the potential to be nicer places to live.

It’s important to note that we’ve also seen countries divided by women, such as the Thatcher era in our own country. However, Obama made a great point: the BBC reports that he explained how most of the problems in the world come from old people, mostly men, holding onto positions of power (we couldn’t possibly guess who he was taking a dig at). Obama’s right: by its very nature, the archaic, patriarchal structure of our world is responsible for a lack of equality. It’s also not hard to find evidence of men in power who have stood in the way of reform or, worse, turned progress backwards. Think of the abortion bans in America, or Brazil’s Bolsonaro who doesn’t believe in climate change.

Barack Obama says women are “indisputably better than men“