Girl Power

Would you be able to name a current female world leader? (Hint: Helen Clark was defeated in the 2008 New Zealand election. And Margaret Thatcher ended her 11-year reign as the Prime Minister of the UK in 1990!) Hopefully you could at least think of Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel, probably the most well-known female world leader at the moment.

Unfortunately, there aren’t enough women world leaders and whenever they do receive media attention the focus is less on their achievements and more on their appearance. This week A Pampered Life looks at the remarkable lives of some of today’s female world leaders (sans details about hairstyles and fashion).

Angela Merkel was the first female and first East German to become Chancellor of Germany when she took office in 2005. Merkel was born in Hamburg in 1954 but grew up in the countryside of the communist east. She has a doctorate in physics and worked as a chemist at a scientific academy in East Berlin. In 1989 she became involved in the democracy movement and joined the CDU (Christian Democratic Union) a couple of months before the reunification of Germany in 1990. During the 90s Merkel served as the Minister for Women and Youth and Minister for the Environment and Conservation in Chancellor Kohl’s cabinet. Merkel has stated the objective of her government is to improve the domestic economy and reduce unemployment. In 2007 she was also the President of the European Council and chair of the G8. Forbes Magazine named Merkel the most powerful woman in the world from 2006-2008.

Sheikh Hasina Wazed became the Prime Minister of Bangladesh after her Awami League party won the 2008 parliamentary elections. This is the second time she has held the position of Prime Minister, the first being from 1996-2001. Born in 1947, Sheikh Hasina is the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the man who orchestrated the separation of Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971 and the country’s first President. In 1975, 18 members of Sheikh Hasina’s family including her father, mother and three brothers were assassinated in their home by military officers. Sheikh Hasina was out of the country at the time and spent the next six years in exile. During her tenure as Prime Minister the economy of Bangladesh grew steadily, and in 2001 she became the first Prime Minister since independence to complete a full five-year term. However, political turmoil continued to plague the country. Sheikh Hasina survived a grenade attack during an opposition rally in 2004 and she was imprisoned on charges of extortion in 2007.

The first woman to be elected head of state of an African country was Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, President of Liberia. She studied accounts and economics in Liberia’s capital Monrovia, and later gained a masters degree in public administration from Harvard University in the US. She served as Finance Minister in the early 70s under William Tolbert’s administration but resigned after a disagreement over public spending. During a military coup by Samuel Doe in1980, President Tolbert and several cabinet members were executed. Johnson-Sirleaf narrowly escaped the purge on the former government by going into exile in Kenya, where she was Director of Citibank in Nairobi from 1983-85. She returned to Liberia to campaign for a seat in the Senate in the national election in 1985 and her open criticism of the military government led to her imprisonment. She was released after a short time and allowed to leave the country, and once again went into exile. After years of bloodshed in Liberia, Johnson-Sirleaf’s win in the 2005 election brings hope. Upon being sworn in as President in 2006, she sought debt assistance from the international community and established a Truth and Reconciliation Committee to investigate corruption and heal ethnic tensions.

Michelle Bachelet made history when she became the first female President of Chile in 2006. In a country where only four percent of senators are women and which is often portrayed as ultra-conservative, Bachelet’s election victory signifies a changing social and political landscape in Chile. Bachelet was born in Santiago in 1951, and was studying medicine in 1975 when she and her mother were arrested and held in detention and torture centres for weeks before being released into exile. Her father had died in custody in 1974 after being imprisoned and tortured for opposing the military coup that brought General Pinochet to power. Bachelet and her mother were exiled to Australia and later went to East Germany. In 1979 Bachelet returned to Chile and after Pinochet was ousted from power in 1990, she became active in politics. She was appointed Minister for Health in 2000 and in 2002 became the first woman to hold the position of Defence Minister in a Latin American country. As President, and leader of the Socialist Party, Bachelet endeavours to bridge the gap between rich and poor in Chile.

We wonder how long it will be until Australia elects its first female Prime Minister?

Image by World Economic Forum

Sources:
http://www.filibustercartoons.com/charts_rest_female-leaders.php
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/711465/Angela-Merkel
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4572387.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Merkel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheikh_Hasina
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/256612/Sheikh-Hasina-Wazed
http://africanhistory.about.com/od/liberia/p/Sirleaf.htm
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1109600/Ellen-Johnson-Sirleaf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Johnson-Sirleaf
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4087510.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Bachelet
http://www.biography.com/articles/Michelle-Bachelet-37782