Former United States President Barack Obama has said he believes governments around the world would perform better if women were put in charge for two years.

Obama made the remarks during a conversation with historian Doris Kearns Goodwin at Salem State University in Massachusetts on Monday, with C-SPAN sharing a clip of his comments on Friday.

The video has since circulated online, drawing renewed attention to the former president’s views on female leadership.

The former president was discussing leadership and the need to give younger generations opportunities to take on positions of influence when he recalled a thought he had while serving in the White House.

“Even when I was president, I sometimes fantasised about if you put women in charge of every government for like two years and then just kind of saw, all right, how are things going?

“I have a strong belief that things would — they wouldn’t be perfect. But they’d be better. I’m confident about that. I really do,” Obama said.

The remarks were made during the hour-long Salem State Series event, which attracted about 3,600 people to the university’s O’Keefe Sports Complex, with hundreds more watching from a satellite venue on campus.

Obama had expressed a similar view in 2019 while speaking at a leadership event in Singapore, when he said he believed countries would see improvements if women ran every country for two years.

During the Salem State discussion, Obama also spoke about political divisions in the United States, saying the country was less divided at the grassroots level than its politics and media might suggest.

“We’re not as divided as our politics or our media would indicate,” he said, adding that people across the country were still treating one another with respect.