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Golda Meir was one of the founders of the
State of Israel. Meir served as the fourth
Prime Minister of Israel from 1969 to 1974.
As the BBC put it, Golda Meir was the
"Iron Lady" of Israeli politics years before
the epithet was coined for Margaret
Thatcher. David Ben-Gurion, the nation's
first Prime Minister, once described her as
"the only man in the Cabinet." She was
Israel's first (and, to date, only) female
Prime Minister, and was the third female
Prime Minister in the world.
David Ben-Gurion
Iron Lady is a nickname that has
frequently been used to describe
female heads of government around
the world. The term describes a
"strong willed" woman. This iron
metaphor was most famously applied
to Margaret Thatcher, nicknamed so
in 1976 by the Soviet media for her
staunch opposition to communism.
Margaret Thatcher served as British
Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990 and
leader of the Conservative Party from
1975 until 1990, being the first (and, to
date, only) woman to hold either post.
She was the first woman to lead a major
political party in the UK, and the first of
only three women to have held any of the
four great offices of state. She made a
speech in 1976 in which she made a
scathing attack on the Soviet Union. In
response, the Soviet Defense Ministry
newspaper Red Star gave her the
nickname "Iron Lady.” She took delight
in the name and it soon became
associated with her image as having an
unwavering and steadfast character.
David Cameron (born 9
October 1966) is the current
Prime Minister of the
United Kingdom. He took
office on 11 May 2010, at
the head of a coalition
between the Conservatives
and the Liberal Democrats.
At the age of 43, Cameron
became the youngest British
Prime Minister since the Earl of Liverpool 198 years
earlier. Cameron leads the first coalition government
of the United Kingdom since the Second World War.
Indira Gandhi (1917-1984) was an Indian
politician who served as Prime Minister of
India for three consecutive terms from 1966
to 1977 and for a fourth term from 1980 until
her assassination in 1984. Born in the
politically influential Nehru dynasty, she
served her father unofficially as a personal
assistant. She became increasingly involved
in an escalating conflict with separatists in
Punjab that led to assassination by her own
bodyguards in 1984.
Jawaharlal Nehru (1889 –1964), Indira Gandhi’s
father, was a political leader of the Indian National
Congress, a pivotal figure in the Indian
independence movement and the first Prime
Minister of Independent India.
A young Indira Nehru and
Mahatma Gandhi, during one of
the latter's fasts
Indira and Mahatma Gandhi circa the 1930s
Benazir Bhutto (born 21 June
1953) is a Pakistani politician who
became the first woman to lead a
post-colonial Muslim state. Bhutto
is the twice-elected Prime
Minister of Pakistan, being swornin for the first time in 1988, to be
deposed 20 months later, under
controversial orders of the then
president Ghulam Ishaq Khan, on
grounds of alleged corruption.
Benazir was re-elected to power in 1993 but subsequently sacked
by the President in 1996 on similar charges. Bhutto has been
living in exile since 1999. She is scheduled to return to Pakistan on
October 18, 2007. Benazir was voted one of the 100 most powerful
women in politics in 2007 by Forbes Magazine.
Pakistani opposition leader Benazir
Bhutto waves to supporters after an
election rally in Rawalpindi
December 27, 2007, shortly before
she was killed in a gun and bomb
attack.
Bhutto went into self-imposed exile in Dubai in 1998.
She returned to Pakistan on October 18, 2007, after reaching
an understanding with President Pervez Musharraf by which
she was granted amnesty and all corruption charges were
withdrawn. She was assassinated on December 27, 2007, after
departing a PPP rally in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi, two
weeks before the scheduled Pakistani general election of 2008
where she was a leading opposition candidate.
With her election as Speaker of the
United States House of
Representatives Nancy Pelosi was
the first woman, the first
Californian and the first ItalianAmerican to hold the Speakership.
As Speaker of the House, Pelosi
ranked second in the line of
presidential succession, following
Vice President Dick Cheney. She
was hence the highest-ranking
woman in the history of the U.S.
Government, and no woman has
ever been as close in line to the U.S.
presidency.
Madeleine Korbel Albright
(1937- ), born in Prague,
Czechoslovakia, now Czech
Republic, was the first
woman to become United
States Secretary of State.
She was nominated by
President Bill Clinton on
December 5, 1996 and was
unanimously confirmed by
the United States Senate
99-0.
The first woman to serve in the
Congress of the United States,
Jeannette Rankin represented
the state of Montana as a
Republican for two
nonconsecutive terms (1917–
1919 and 1940–1942).
Favoring the U.S. foreign policy of isolationism, Rankin
opposed the declaration of war against Germany during World
War I (1914–1918) and was the only congressional member to
vote against war with Japan after the Pearl Harbor attack in
1941. In addition to her congressional career, Rankin
championed feminist causes, performed social work, and at the
age of 87, led a 5000-woman march on Capitol Hill in 1968 to
protest the Vietnam War.
Janet Reno earned a reputation
as an innovative, dedicated, and
even-handed public servant in
the state of Florida, where she
served as state attorney. In
1993 President Bill Clinton
appointed her United States
attorney general, the first
woman in U.S. history to hold
the post.
Representing the state of
Maine, Margaret Chase
Smith served in the
United States House of
Representatives from
1940 to 1948, when she
was elected to the Senate.
Thus she became the first
woman to win election to
both houses of Congress.
In 1992 Illinois representative Carol MoseleyBraun became the first
black woman elected to the
U.S. Senate and the second
black in the Senate since the
Reconstruction period, after
the end of the American
Civil War in 1865.
Shirley Chisholm, a New York Democrat, was the first black
woman to serve in the U.S. Congress. Chisholm served six
terms, from 1969 to 1983. Prior to serving in Congress, she
taught in elementary schools and served as a director for
child-care centers. Chisholm ran unsuccessfully for the 1972
Democratic presidential nomination.
Geraldine Ferraro was chosen by U.S. Democratic presidential
candidate Walter F. Mondale in 1984 as his vice-presidential
running mate, which made her the first female vicepresidential nominee of a major U.S. party. Ferraro, a New
York lawyer, was serving as a three-term congresswoman from
Queens. She was the head of the party’s platform committee
when she was selected by Mondale (defeated by incumbent
Ronald Reagan).
During his 1980 campaign for the presidency of the United
States, Ronald Reagan promised to appoint the first female
justice to the United States Supreme Court. Sandra Day
O’Connor left the Arizona Court of Appeals to become that
historic appointee in 1981. In keeping with her background in
Republican politics, O’Connor has generally voted with the
present court’s conservative majority, but on some issues,
notably abortion rights, O’Connor has sided with the more
liberal justices appointed during the Warren Court and the
earlier Burger Court.
In 1993 Ruth Bader Ginsburg became the second woman in
American history to serve on the United States Supreme Court.
Ginsburg first received an appointment to the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the District of Columbia from President Jimmy
Carter in 1980, and kept the position for 13 years. President
Bill Clinton then appointed her to the Supreme Court to fill the
seat vacated by Byron White.
In her single space flight,
Tereshkova spent more time
in orbit than all of the U.S.
Mercury (1958-1963)
astronauts combined.
Russian cosmonaut
Valentina Tereshkova
was the first woman to
enter space. She piloted
the Vostok 6 in orbit
around the earth for
four days in 1963.
As with all Vostok landings,
Tereshkova ejected from the
capsule 6000 m (20,000 ft)
above the ground and
descended by parachute.
Tereshkova was a cotton mill
worker and a parachutist
before becoming a
cosmonaut.
Astronaut Sally K. Ride entered orbit on the 1983 Challenger
mission, becoming the first American woman in space. Her
work during the six-day flight included launching
communications satellites and testing the shuttle’s remote
manipulator arm. Ride made a second shuttle flight in 1984
and served on the commission established to investigate the
Challenger explosion of 1986.
When Dr. Mae Jemison successfully completed her
astronaut training program in August 1988, she
became the fifth black astronaut and the first black
female astronaut in NASA history.
Dr. Mae Jemison was the science mission specialist on
STS-47 Spacelab-J (September 12-20, 1992). STS-47
was a cooperative mission between the United States
and Japan. The eight-day mission was accomplished
in 127 orbits of the Earth, and included 44 Japanese
and U.S. life science and materials processing
experiments. Dr. Mae Jemison was a co-investigator
on the bone cell research experiment flown on the
mission. The Endeavour and her crew launched from
and returned to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
In completing her first space flight, Dr. Mae Jemison
logged 190 hours, 30 minutes, 23 seconds in space,
making her the first African-American woman in
space.
In 1985 American
civilian astronaut
Sharon Christa
McAuliffe was
selected to become the
first teacher in space.
Tragically, she was
killed along with six
other crew members
when the shuttle
Challenger exploded
shortly after lift-off on
January 28, 1986.
On January 28, 1986, the
world watched in horror as the
United States space shuttle
Challenger exploded 73
seconds after takeoff.
Television film footage
captured the tragic explosion and its aftermath, as smoke
trailed out of the craft and it fell to the ocean. Blamed on a
faulty sealant, known as an “O-ring,” in the solid-fuel rocket,
the disaster took the lives of the seven crew members on board
the shuttle. The accident and the ensuing investigation into its
cause temporarily halted the space shuttle program, which
resumed in September 1988 with the launching of the space
shuttle Discovery.
On February 1, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia broke apart
and burned up while reentering the atmosphere. This photo of
the debris blazing across the sky was taken from the ground in
Texas. All seven of the crew were killed.
Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman to
become a medical doctor in the United States. In
1853 she and her sister cofounded the New York
Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children.
In 1889 Jane Addams founded
Hull House, a center for welfare
work in Chicago. Fueled by
Addams’s exuberant
personality, Hull House
championed the causes of labor
reform, public education, and
immigrants’ rights. Addams’s
book, Twenty Years at Hull
House, details her service and
social justice work in Chicago.
American reformer Dorothea
Dix championed the causes of
prison inmates, the mentally
ill, and the destitute.
Horrified by the conditions
provided for the mentally ill
in Massachusetts, Dix
successfully petitioned the
state government for
improvements in 1843. She
was directly responsible for
building or enlarging 32
mental hospitals in North
America, Europe, and Japan.