After Prime Minister Theresa May shook hands with First Minister Nicola Sturgeon on the steps of Bute House, the FM tweeted the historic picture with the caption "Politics aside - I hope girls everywhere look at this photograph and believe nothing should be off-limits for them."

And so say all of us. I paused to relish it, because I'm old enough for that image to carry the whiff of revolutionary cordite. I'm talking here about memories of Scotland in the 1970s, when only a brave woman went into a bar by herself, when barmen wouldn't serve women pints, groping was just a laugh and sexual jibes were rife, and kitchen and double glazing salesmen would only take an order if the "man of the house" was there to sign.

The suits ruled. The rules suited them. There were no female judges, newspaper editors or business leaders; the upper echelons of politics and the civil service were almost 100% male.

Oh yes, watching that May and Sturgeon display of quiet steel, women able to fell a blustering man with a quizzical eyebrow, you realise how far we have come. And how brilliant it is that every woman in the UK can take for granted the right to an education, a career, equality of treatment and, should they aspire to it, the opportunity to hold power like those two intelligent, sensible role-models.

Not to mention others: Arlene Foster, first minister of Northern Ireland; Leanne Wood, leader of Plaid Cymru; Scotland's Kezia Dugdale and Ruth Davidson.

We've got another big hope too - Hillary Clinton as the next US president.

It's useful to highlight the rise of women at home when the world has never seemed more hostile abroad. Look at the dreadful killing of Pakistani Qandeel Baloch, after she challenged traditional social and Muslim norms by posting Western-style selfies online.

She offered to strip for the Pakistani cricket team if they beat India, and had made a twerking video with singer Aryan Khan. Her brother told a press conference last weekend that he drugged and strangled her for bringing dishonour on the family name. He had "no regrets".

Qandeel said on Facebook recently that she was "trying to change the typical orthodox mindset of people who don't wanna come out of their shells of false beliefs and old practices".

Closer to home, and critical to the future of Europe, lies the problem of Turkey, in line to join the EU. Turkey, a Nato member, is critical to world order, a three-way junction where East meets West meets Russia. Maintaining stability is vital.

Yet the President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, seen through the eyes of this Western woman, is unspeakable. He's about 200 years behind that scene on the steps of Bute House. A pious Muslim, he wants to drag his formerly secular country backwards by limiting the social liberties of women.

He says a woman's life is "incomplete" if she has "failed to reproduce" and that "rejecting motherhood by choosing to have a career means giving up on humanity." Manual work is unsuitable for the "delicate nature" of women.

Recently on state television he declared no Muslim family should use birth control, as "we need to increase the number of our descendants." He recommends every woman should have at least three children and once described birth control as "treason". He proposes to limit abortion rights, the morning-after pill and even life-saving caesareans -- on the grounds they can reduce the mother's future fertility.

This despite the fact Turkey's population is growing exponentially and has been swelled by a million refugees from Syria and Iraq.

Like Donald Trump, who accused one TV journalist of being on her period, Erdoğan has attacked female journalists who challenge him. His deputy prime minister, Bülent Arinç, has suggested women should not laugh loudly in public.

Erdoğan's attitudes have caused outrage and activists say they expose women to violence. According to non-governmental organisations, more than 200 women died as a result of domestic violence in the first six months of 2014.

Turkey, with only one woman in the cabinet, ranks 130th out of 145 countries on the World Economic Forum's global gender index. Of course, the president denies he is a misogynist. He is devout, he protests. He loves women. "I would kiss my mother's feet because they smelled of paradise. She would glance coyly and cry sometimes."

Yuck.

"Of all Muslim countries," says Professor Norman Stone, the Scottish historian who teaches in Ankara, "Turkey is both the most successful and the one where Ramadan is least observed." He says that secular Turkey detests the increasing "religification" -- the inability to buy a beer in a busy modern city, the university seminars on Darwin being stopped.

Misogyny and a rejection of civilised knowledge is not, of course, the monopoly of the Muslim faith. In America, the same thing has happened with the popular right-wing rising behind Donald Trump -- what Steven Spielberg has called "a paroxysm of rage" caused by the stalled political process.

Trump's war of attrition against women -- he's described them variously as fat, a pig, face of a dog, slob, a disgusting animal and joked he'd like to go out with his own daughter -- proves that we live in horrible times. He has retracted his suggestion women be punished for having abortions, but I guess we know what he really thinks.

When, hours after the horror of Nice, I thought the world couldn't get any worse, the Turkish coup took place. I genuinely felt scared; the world rocked a bit. In the short term we need Erdoğan to hold things together, despicable as his attitudes are to women.

So I hold, in my mind's eye, that image of those two gutsy, pragmatic, serious female politicians. We have never more needed women in power to deal with threats and the madness in the world.

Even if sometimes they may have to sup with long spoons, and wear a clothes peg on their nose.

Comment by Melanie Reid. Melanie's Spinal Column appears in The Times Saturday magazine.