A fact from Rawiri Waititi appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 25 November 2020 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
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Latest comment: 3 years ago7 comments4 people in discussion
Hey, Schwede66, I don't know the significance of 'male co-leader' and we don't seem to have an article on or even a redirect to link to. Is there something we could link to that would allow readers to figure out what that is? Sorry for the Yankee ignorance! —valereee (talk) 12:54, 25 October 2020 (UTC)Reply
@Valereee: The Māori Party's constitution states (at 7.3) that: "The co-leaders will be selected from the sitting Members of Parliament and one will be tāne [male] and one will be wahine [female]. In the event that the co-leadership criteria cannot be met, the National Council may appoint a co-leader who sits outside of Parliament." Under this rule, If Waititi is the only Māori Party Member of Parliament, then he must be a co-leader, and then the other co-leader must be female. I'll add a little more into the article to explain this. HenryCrun15 (talk) 19:48, 26 October 2020 (UTC)Reply
Thank you both. I'm impressed, also embarrassed that I didn't know this. :) It may not need spelling out except for...well, I won't insult other people in the US. Maybe it only needed spelling out for me lol —valereee (talk) 20:07, 26 October 2020 (UTC)Reply
@Valereee: Your question is certainly a worthwhile one to raise, as others have said. The most prominent example of this leadership model in New Zealand is our Green Party, which has used it since 1995. Some rapid searching has shown me that a number of European political parties currently have male and female co-leaders, but they don't actually have formal rules stating that one must be female and one must be male, or indeed that they must have two at all. The Scottish Greens currently require co-leaders, of whom one must be female. The Green Party of England and Wales has had co-leaders since 2016, because candidates chose to run for the leadership together under a job-share model. According to the Procedure section of that article, they can have a leader and two deputies, or two co-leaders and one deputy, which is not something I've ever heard of in New Zealand. There's no mention of sex/gender requirements though. I also know co-leadership is popular in German politics at the moment - The Social Democrats, the Greens, The Left and the AfD all have co-leaders currently, but their English Wikipedia coverage doesn't specify if there are any particular rules around this. It would be interesting to know if there's been any detailed media coverage or academic study of co-leadership in political parties, as that could form the basis of an article. Hope I haven't rambled on too much! MW691 (talk) 04:23, 27 October 2020 (UTC)Reply
If it's that common, we should indeed have an article on it that can explain the basic concept and then list the instances by country. Schwede6605:41, 27 October 2020 (UTC)Reply