The leaders of the G20 are meeting in late September in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Once again, the question will be posed about what to do with the leaders’ spouses, particularly the male ones. At the April G20 meeting in London, Néstor Kirchner, the husband of Cristina Kirchner, president of Argentina and himself a former president, and Joachim Sauer, the husband of German Chancellor Angela Merkel were strangely absent from the official spouses’ photograph.

Dana Goldstein commented at the time on The American Prospect blog: “[I]t’s perfectly okay if Kirchner and Sauer have better things to do than pose for silly pictures and be props for their politician wives. I wish more female political spouses had the same convictions, and that the public could accept that.”