Politics Women - UOL Blog

Barbara Levy Boxer

Barbara Levy Boxer (born November 11, 1940) is an American politician and the current junior U.S. Senator from de States of California.A member of the Democratic Party, Boxer was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1992. Throughout her career, Boxer has been a vocal advocate for environmental issues, women's rights, gun control, and medical research. She is generally classified as a progressive or liberal in the left wing of her party and is often in conflict with conservative groups. Her electoral margins have increased each time she has sought re-election. With the 110th Congress convening, Boxer has taken position as Chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. She is the first woman to chair the comittee.

She has held the position of Chief Deputy Whip in Minority, and as of January 4,2007 is currently the new Chief Deputy Whip in Marjority

Ruth Dreyfuss

Ruth Dreifuss (born January 9, 1940 in St. Gallen) is a Swiss politician and former member of the Swiss Federal Council (1993-2002 representing the Republic and Canton of Geneva).

She has a Master of Economics of the University of Geneva.
She was a journalist at Coopération from 1961 to 1964.
Assistant at the University of Geneva dfrom 1970 to 1972.
Scientifical-expert at the Federal Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation between 1972 and 1981.
She is the Secretary of the Swiss Trade Union until 1993.
She is a social-democratic member of the City of Berne's Legislative Assembly from 1989 to 1992. She misses out the election to The National Council of Switzerland in 1991.

She has held the position of Chief Deputy Whip in Minority, and as of January 4, 2007 is currently the new Chief Deputy Whip in Majority.

Mary Patricia McAleese

Mary Patricia McAleese (born 27 June 1951) is the eighth, and current, President of Ireland. She was first elected president in 1997 and was re-elected, without contest, to another seven year term in 2004. Born in Belfast in Northern Ireland, prior to becoming president she was a barrister, journalist and academic. She was ranked the 55th most powerful woman in the world on a list of The world's 100 Most powerful women by Forbes.

Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga

She (born 29 June 1945) was the fifth President (and fourth to hold the office as Executive president) of Sri Lanka (12 November 1994 - 19 November 2005). She was the leader of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party until end of 2005.After returning to Sri Lanka, she took up politics in the SLFP and in 1974 became an Executive Committee Member of its Women's League. Following the Land Reform in Sri Lanka in 1972- 1976, she was Additional Principal Director of the Land Reform Commission (LRC). In 1976 - 1977 she was Chairman of the Janawasa Commission, which established collective farms. In 1976- 1979 she acted as an Expert Consultant to the Food and Agriculture Organisation(FAQ).

Angela Dorothea Merkel

Angela Dorothea Merkel (born in Hamburg, Germany, on July 17, 1954) is the first female Chancellor of Germany, the first former citizen of the German Democratic Republic to lead the reunited Germany and the first woman to lead Germany since it became a modern nation-state in 1871. She is also, as of 2007, the youngest person to be German chancellor since the Second World War. Merkel, considered by Forbes Magazine to be the most powerful woman in the world, is only the third woman to serve on the G8 (after Margaret Thatcher of the UK and Kim Campbell of Canada) and in 2007 became the second woman to chair a G8 summit after Thatcher.In her function as Chancellor of Germany, Merkel is currently (rotative, L st term 2007) also president of the european Council.In 2007, Merkel became a Member of the council Women World Leaders, a group of women heads of state and govemment.

Madeleine Albright

She (born on May 15, 1937) served as the 64th United States Secretary of State. She currently serves as the Mortara Distinguished Professor of Diplomacy at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.When she was confirmed as the 64th Secretary of State of the United States, she became the first female Secretary of State and the highest-ranking woman in the history of the United States government. Being foreign-born, she was not eligible as Presidential Successor and was excluded from nuclear contingency plans. As Secretary, Dr. Albright reinforced America’s alliances, advocated democracy and human rights, and promoted American trade and business, labor and environmental standards abroad.

Diah Permata Megawati Setiawati Soekarnoputri

She (born January 23, 1947), was President of Indonesia from July 2001 to October 20, 2004. She was the country's first female President, and the first Indonesian leader born after independence. On September 20 she lost her campaign for re-election in the 2004 Indonesian presidential election. She is the daughter of Indonesia's first president, Sukarno.

In 2004, she was ranked number 8 on Forbes Magazine's list of the World's 100 Most Powerful Women.

Josephine Bernadette Devlin McAliskey

She ( born April 23, 1947), ia a Northern Ireland republican political activist.She served as a Menber Member of Parliament at Westminster from 1969 to 1974 for the Mid Ulster constituency, and is a leading critic of the Good Friday Agreement.She remains the youngest woman ever to have been elected to the British parliament. Her 1969 book, The Price of My Soul, did much to publicise the claims of Roman Catholics about discrimination in Northern Ireland.Her radical left-wing politics resulted in conviction of incitement to riot in December 1969 because she had actively engaged, on the side of the residents, in the 'Battle of the Bogside' which followed that year's Apprentice Boys march and is widely marked as the beginning of Northern Ireland's 30 year "troubles". She served a short jail term. After being re-elected in the 1970 general election, Devlin declared that she would sit in Parliament as an Independent Socialist.

Sandra Day O'Connor

Sandra(born March 26,1930) is a American jurist who server as the first female Associate Justice of Supreme Court of the United States from 1981 to 2006. Due to her case-by-case approach to jurisprudence and her relatively moderate political views, she was the crucial swing vote of the Court for many of her final years on the bench, though she objected to that characterization because she felt it painted her as an unprincipled jurist. In 2001, Ladies' Home Journal ranked her as the second most powerful woman in America.Prior to joining the Supreme Court, she was a politician and jurist in Arizona. She was nominated to the Court by President Ronald Reagan and served for over twenty-four years. On July 1, 2005, she announced her intention to retire effective upon the confirmation of her successor. Justice Samuel Alito, nominated to take her seat in October 2005, received confirmation on January 31, 2006. O'Connor is currently the only Retired Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. She is curently the Chancellor of the College of College of William and Mary.

Elizabeth II

(Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor, born 21 April 1926) is Queen of sixteen sovereign states, holding each crown and title equally. However, she is more directly involved with the United Kingdom, where the Royal Family resides, and the Monarchy is historically indigenous.Apart from the United Kingdom, Elizabeth II is also Queen of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, and Saint Kitts and Nevis, where she is represented by Governors-General. The sixteen countries of which she is Queen are known as Commonwealth Realms, and their combined population is 128 million.Elizabeth became Queen of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Ceylon upon the death of her father, George VI, on 6 February 1952. As other colonies of the British Empire (now the Commonwealth of Nations) attained independence from the UK during her reign, she acceded to the newly created thrones as Queen of each respective realm so that throughout her 55 years on the throne she has been Monarch of 32 nations, half of which either moved to different royal houses, or became republics.

Diane Julie Abbott

Diane (born September 27, 1953 in Paddington, London) is a British Labour Party Member of Parliament, representing the Hackney North and Stoke Newington constituency. She was the first black woman elected to the House of Commons when she was elected in the 1987 General Election. She remained the only black woman MP for ten years until she was joined in the Commons by Oona King in 1997. She is seen as being to the left of New Labour and is a member of the Socialist Campaign Group.

Condoleezza Rice

Condolezza (born November 14, 1954) is the 66th United States Secretary of State, and the second in the administration of President George W. Bush to hold the office. Rice is the first African American woman, second African American (after Powell), and second woman (after Madeleine Albright) to serve as Secretary of State.Condoleezza Rice was Bush's National Security Advisor during his first term (2001–2005). Before joining the Bush administration, she was a Professor of political science at Stanford University where she served as Provost from 1993 to 1999.During the administration of George H. W. Bush, Rice also served as the Soviet and East European Affairs Advisor during the dissolution of the Soviet Union and German reunification.Rice's role as advisor to the President and chief diplomat for the United States during a period of intense criticism of America's War on Terror has made her a controversial figure.In 2004 and 2005, she was ranked as the most powerful woman in the world by Forbes magazine and number two in 2006. She is also one of only two African Americans to have been repeatedly ranked among the world's 100 most influential people by Time magazine.

Barbara Honegger

Barabara was a consultant at the Justice Department during the Reagan administration. She headed the department's gender discrimination agency review before resigning in August, 1983, the day after the Washington Post printed an opinion article written by Honnegger. The quotes below are from that article.

An analyst with the Hoover Institute and other organizations before she joined the Reagan administration, she has worked as an investigative journalist since her resignation. Her book, October Surprise, alleges Reagan and Bush involvement in Iran's delay in negotiating release of the Iran captives until after Jimmy Carter had lost the 1980 election.

Michele Bachelet

Verónica Michelle Bachelet Jeria (born September 29, 1951) is a center-left politician and the current President of Chile—the first woman to hold this position in the country's history. She won the 2006 presidential election in a runoff, beating center-right billionaire businessman and former senator Sebastián Piñera, with 53.5% of the vote. A moderate Socialist, she campaigned on a platform of continuing Chile's free market policies, while increasing social benefits to help reduce the country's gap between rich and poor, one of the largest in the world. She was inaugurated on March 11, 2006.A polyglot , she speaks Spanish, English, German, Portuguese and French.In 2006, Forbes magazine ranked her as 17th in the list of the 100 most powerful women in the world.

Marie Ségolène Royal

She served as a judge (conseiller) of an administrative court, an assignment for low-ranking graduates, before she was noticed by President François Mitterrand's special adviser Jacques Attali and recruited in his staff in 1982. She held the junior rank of chargée de mission from 1982 to 1988.She is a deputy in the National Assembly for the Deux-Sèvres département (1988-1992, 1993-1997, 2002-). Her candidacy was an example of the French political tradition of parachutage (parachuting), appointing promising Parisian political staffers as candidates in rural districts. However, hers was second rate: she was up against an entrenched UDF incumbent, and François Mitterrand is said to have told her: "You will not win, but you will next time." She did win against the odds, and remarked: "Pour un parachutage, l'atterrissage est réussi." ("As far as parachuting goes, the landing was a success")

Hillary Clinton

The wife of President Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2000, becoming the first First Lady ever elected to national office. After graduating from Wellesley College in 1969, Hillary Rodham went to Yale Law School, where she met Clinton, a fellow student. She served as a staff attorney for the Children's Defense Fund and was also on the congressional Impeachment Inquiry staff in 1974, at the tail end of Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal. Hillary left Washington for Arkansas, marrying Bill Clinton in 1975. She was First Lady of Arkansas (the governor's wife) for 12 years, while raising their daughter Chelsea and practicing law. When Bill Clinton won the White House in 1992 she became First Lady of the United States.

Vaira Vike-Freiberga

Throughout her two presidential terms, she has been very popular among Latvians; her approval rating has ranged between 70% and 85%. She has been most active in foreign policy. Vaira Vîíe-Freiberga is known for her role in Latvia's NATO membership and its accession into the European Union, which Latvia joined in 2004. She is also a strong supporter of the U.S. policy in Iraq. On various occasions she has asked that Russia admit to the Soviet occupation of the Baltic States.

One such occasion was her address to a joint session of the US Congress, in which she thanked the United States for supporting the new democracies of the Baltics and Eastern Europe. She went on to emphasize that history was not being re-written by acknowledging that the Soviets had occupied the three Baltic nations.

Gloria Arroyo

The President of the Philippines, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, holds many records. Elected as Senator during her first try in politics in 1992, she was re-elected Senator in 1995 with nearly 16 million votes, the highest number of votes in Philippine history at that time. She was elected Vice President of the Philippines in 1998 with almost 13 million votes, the largest mandate in the history of presidential or vice presidential elections. She was sworn in as the 14th President of the Philippines on 20 January 2001 by Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr. after the Supreme Court unanimously declared the position of President vacant, the second woman to be swept into the Presidency by a peaceful People Power revolution (EDSA II). In 2004 she won the Presidential elections for a fresh mandate, winning with one million votes over her closest opponent. The President is the daughter of the late President and Mrs. Diosdado Macapagal, who were well known for their integrity and simple but dignified lifestyle. During the Presidency of Diosdado Macapagal, the Philippines was second only to Japan in economic progress in Asia.

Catharine Drew Gilpin Faust

Catharine Drew Gilpin Faust (born September 18, 1947) is an American
historian and academic administrator, currently dean of Harvard's Radcliffe
Institute for Advanced Study and president-elect of Harvard University. She
will take office on July 1, 2007, succeeding Interim President Derek Bok,
becoming the first female president in the university's history. She will
also be Harvard's first president since 1672 without an undergraduate or
graduate degree from Harvard.

Tarja Kaarina Halonen

Tarja Kaarina Halonen (born December 24, 1943, in Helsinki, Finland) is the
President of Finland. She began her first term of office in 2000 and was
re-elected on January 29, 2006. Her current term expires in 2012. She is the
eleventh President of Finland and the first woman to hold the office.
She married her long time common-law partner, Dr. Pentti Arajärvi, after she
was elected President for the first term.

Helen Clark

Helen Elizabeth Clark (born February 26, 1950) became Prime Minister of New
Zealand in December 1999 and entered her third successive term in that
office in 2005. As of 2006, she is ranked by Forbes magazine as the 20th
most powerful woman in the world.
When the New Zealand Labour Party came into office as part of a coalition
following the 1999 election, Clark became the second female Prime Minister
of New Zealand and the first to have won office at an election.
Clark has held the positions of Prime Minister and of Minister for Arts,
Culture and Heritage from 1999 until the present. She also has ministerial
responsibility for the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service and for
Ministerial Services. Her particular areas of interest include social policy
and international affairs.