By DAN BILEFSKY

SOFIA, Bulgaria - Prime Minister Boiko M. Borisov of Bulgaria, a thicknecked former karate instructor, bodyguard and onetime fireman, may seem an unlikely feminist.

But the tough-guy politician has in recent months promoted a legion of women, heralding what some are calling a revolution in the politics of this macho Balkan country.

“Women are more diligent than men, and they don’t take long lunches or go to the bar,” insisted Mr. Borisov, a former mayor of Sofia, the capital, who has cited his mother and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany as his role models.

“Women have stronger characters than men because when they say no they mean no, and they are less corruptible,” he said last summer, inaugurating the women’s wing of his centerright party.

While some critics view Mr. Borisov’s elevation of women as little more than a cynical ploy aimed at giving this poor, notoriously corrupt country an image makeover, few dispute that the empowerment of women in Bulgarian public life is reaching new heights, even as men still dominate politics. Women in high places include the justice minister, the mayor of Sofia, the speaker of Parliament, the nominee to lead the European Union’s humanitarian aid and the head of the prime minister’s office.

Irina Bokova, the Bulgarian diplomat who recently defeated the Egyptian culture minister to lead the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, is a 57-year-old mother and arms control expert. In 2009 elections for the European Parliament, 60 percent of the candidates put forward by Mr. Borisov’s centerright party were women. And after the national elections in July, 34 of 116 Bulgarian Parliament seats were held by women - not a large percentage in some countries, but big for Bulgaria.

How permanent their place at the pinnacle is in dispute. Across the border in Romania, the political establishment elevated Monica Macovei, a prominent human rights lawyer and corruption fighter, to justice minister in 2004. Once Romania was safely in the European Union, she was dumped, and she is now relegated to the relative obscurity of sitting in the European Parliament.

How permanent women’s place at the pinnacle is in dispute. But at least, Bulgarian officials, conscious that the country won the dubious distinction in October 2008 of being the first to lose European development funds for fear they would be siphoned to organized crime, are certainly hoping for some lasting image overhaul.

Kamen Sildniski, deputy chief prosecutor, noted that there were no criminal cases of corruption against a woman in Bulgaria and that women who applied to the Prosecutor’s Office consistently outperformed men on polygraph tests.

“It’s hard to admit, but women are less corruptible than men and are cleaner - because they are more risk averse,” he said.

In development circles, many prefer to emphasize the equality that comes with women’s promotion rather than the presumption of incorruptibility it brings. Some people contend that women are socialized to be more ethical than men, and others retort that women are just as corruptible but less tested, as they are outside the social and political networks where corruption festers.

In the case of Bulgaria, sociologists say the recent rise of women in politics, which was instigated by Mr. Borisov’s mentor, Bulgaria’s former king and prime minister, Simeon Saxe-Coburg- Gotha, can be traced to the Communist era, when socialist ideology empowered women to be equal to men.

Tatyana Kmetova, executive director of the Center of Women’s Studies and Policies, noted that under Communism, women were expected to work and often received the same wages as men. “We never had a feminist movement in this country,” she said, noting that in the late 1970s, Bulgaria had the highest percentage of working women in the world. “During Communism, women in Bulgaria were represented in almost every walk of life, from plant managers to medicine.”

Yordanka Fandakova, the first woman to be mayor of Sofia, a mother, grandmother and former headmistress, said she had faced discrimination during the mayoral campaign when opponents taunted her for being a lackey of Mr. Borisov. On the eve of the elections, the country’s leading market researcher published a poll showing the qualities that Sofia residents sought in their mayor. Being a man was at the top of the list.

Ms. Fandakova won by a landslide anyway in November, with many analysts attributing this to Mr. Borisov’s support. “During the election my opponents called me one of Borisov’s good girls,’’ she said. “The media tried to portray me as weak. But I personally don’t devote much time distinguishing between men and women. Results are results.’’


Prime Minister Boiko M. Borisov said women in Bulgaria reinvented themselves after Communism. / STOYAN NENOV/REUTERS