5. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of Liberia
Educated at the University of Wisconsin and at Harvard, Africa’s first female President served as Liberia’s Minister of Finance in the late 1970s. But when Samuel Doe seized power in a military coup in 1980 and executed the President and several Cabinet members, Johnson Sirleaf fled to Kenya, where she became a director at Citibank. She returned to contest the 1996 presidential election and lost to Charles Taylor. In 2005, she ran again and won, promising to bring motherly sensitivity and emotion to the presidency — a tall order in a country still reeling from years of civil war.
4. Julia Gillard, Prime Minister of Australia
After she helped orchestrate a Labor Party coup that ousted Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on June 24, 2010, Gillard, 48, became Australia’s first female PM. Tasked with rebuilding dwindling support for her party, she called snap elections just three weeks into office, hoping to benefit from her bounce in public opinion. But the Aug. 21 election proved inconclusive: neither Gillard’s center-left government nor the Liberal-National coalition led by Tony Abbott were able to secure an outright majority. The stalemate finally broke on Sep. 7. After more than two weeks of protracted negotiation with a handful of independent candidates, Gillard secured a 76-74 majority in parliament to form a minority government.
3. Dilma Rousseff, President of Brazil
“I would like parents who have daughters to look straight in their eyes and tell them: ‘Yes, a woman can,’” Dilma Rousseff said following her victory in Brazil’s runoff election. When she takes the reins of the world’s fourth largest democracy on Jan. 1, Rousseff will become the South American country’s first female president. Her win, a victory for would-be women leaders everywhere, was also a nod to outgoing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who handpicked her for the job. As Lula’s former chief of staff, Rousseff promised to carry on the outgoing and overwhelmingly popular leader’s work. “I offer special thanks to President Lula,” she said in her election night speech. “I will know how to honor his legacy. I will know how to consolidate and go forward with his work.”
2. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, President of Argentina
Elected President in November 2007 (thereby succeeding her husband Néstor), Fernández has proven she is her own woman. Dismissively referred to as “Cristina” by some members of Argentina’s macho political elite, Fernández has survived a standoff with the country’s powerful farming lobby, a fallout with the U.S. over a suitcase allegedly containing illegal campaign contributions and a series of high-profile economic-policy spats that culminated in the ousting of the governor of Argentina’s Central Bank earlier this year. With her striking appearance and polarizing rhetoric, she inevitably draws comparisons with former First Lady Eva Perón.
1. Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany
The most influential female politician in the world, Merkel earned a doctorate in physics in East Germany before turning her eye to politics. She won a seat in the Bundestag during the first post-reunification general election, in December 1990, and Chancellor Helmut Kohl appointed her as a Cabinet minister just one year later. Childless and twice married, the chairwoman of the Christian Democratic Union often comes off as reserved and self-effacing. But as she told TIME in a 2010 interview, she has plenty of confidence: “You could certainly say that I’ve never underestimated myself. There’s nothing wrong with being ambitious.”
source
0 comments:
Post a Comment