Politics Archives - Page 54 of 55

Michelle Bachelet

Verónica Michelle Bachelet Jeria is a Chilean politician who served as the United Nations’ High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2018. She previously served as President of Chile from 2006 to 2010 and 2014 to 2018; a member of the Socialist Party of Chile, she was the first woman to hold the Chilean presidency. After leaving the presidency in 2010 and while not immediately reelectable (Chile does not allow consecutive presidential terms), she was appointed the first executive director of the newly created United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. In December 2013, Bachelet was reelected as president with more than 62% of the vote, improving on the 54% she won in 2006. She became the first President of Chile to be reelected since 1932.
Bachelet, a physician who has studied military strategy at university level, had also been Health Minister and Defense Minister under her predecessor, Ricardo Lagos. In addition to her native Spanish, she speaks, with varying levels of fluency, English, German, and Portuguese.

Katharine Susannah Prichard

Katharine Susannah Prichard was an Australian author and co-founding member of the Communist Party of Australia. Over her more than 50-year career, she published novels, volumes of poetry and short story collections.

Jiang Qing

Jiang Qing was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, actor, and major political figure during the country’s Cultural Revolution (1966 to 1976). In 1938, she became the fourth wife of Mao Zedong, the Chairman of the Communist Party and Paramount leader of China, and served as the inaugural “First Lady” of the People’s Republic of China. She was best known for playing a major role in the Cultural Revolution and for forming the political alliance known as the “Gang of Four”. In addition to her work as first lady, Jiang worked as Director of Film in the Central Propaganda Department, and as a member of the Ministry of Culture steering committee for the film industry. She was also known for using her political power to attack her rivals and enemies, including those who had personally slighted her.
In the 1930s, Jiang Qing was active in both the Communist Party and as an actor. She was jailed for three months in 1934 for her political activities in Shanghai. Taking the stage name “”Lán Píng”” (“”Blue Apple””, 蓝苹), she appeared in many films and plays, including Goddess of Freedom, Scenes of City Life, Blood on Wolf Mountain, Wang Laowu and a starring role in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. In 1937, Jiang joined the Lianhua Film Company and starred in the drama Big Thunderstorm (大雷雨).
At the beginning of China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1967, Jiang declared eight performance works to be the new models for proletarian literature and art, called “”model operas””, or “”revolutionary operas””. These designed to glorify Mao Zedong, The People’s Liberation Army, and the revolutionary struggles. Jiang also directed operas and ballets with communist and revolutionary content as part of an effort to transform China’s culture. She dominated the Chinese arts, and in particular attempted to reform the Beijing Opera. She developed a new form of art called the Eight model plays or “”revolutionary opera”” which showed the world in simple, binary terms (i.e “”good guys”” vs “”bad guys””).

Lakshmi Puri

Lakshmi Puri is a former Assistant Secretary-General at the United Nations and the former Deputy Executive Director of UN Women. Prior to her 15 years with the United Nations, she served as an Indian diplomat for 28 years, and was the India’s Ambassador to Hungary and accredited to Bosnia and Herzegovina. Based at the Ministry of External Affairs headquarters in Delhi, she served as the Under-Secretary for Japan and Korea, and later as Under-Secretary for Pakistan. She also served as the Joint-Secretary Economic Division and Multilateral Economic Relations (ED & MER) for six years, working on negotiating economic diplomacy initiatives such as the Look East Policy, Indo-ASEAN Dialogue Partnership, Indian-Ocean Rim Association, Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation as well as Group of 15.
She joined the United Nations in 2002 as the Director of United Nations Conference on Trade and Development’s (UNCTAD) flagship Division on Trade in goods, services and commodities. After several years, she became Acting Deputy Secretary-General of UNCTAD (2007 to 2009). From 2009 to 2011, she was Director of the UN Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States.
In 2011, Puri was appointed Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations and Deputy Executive Director of UN Women, the pioneering global entity for promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women.
Lakshmi is a published author of several reports and research papers, and has received several awards, including the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights, Novus Award for Championing the Sustainable Development Goals (Novus Summit), and the Millennium Campus Award (2015).

Minnie Fisher Cunningham

Born: March 19 1882, United States Died: 9 December 1964 Country most active: United States Also known as: NA Minnie Fisher Cunningham was an American suffrage activist, who was the […]

Keisha Lance Bottoms

Keisha Lance Bottoms was elected the 60th Mayor of Atlanta, Georgia in 2017. She had previously served in the Atlanta City Council for eight years representing District 11 in southwest Atlanta and won a highly competitive election to become the second black woman ever to be elected mayor of Atlanta. Prior to that, Bottoms was a prosecutor, and also represented children in juvenile court. In 2002, she became a magistrate judge. As mayor, Bottoms she signed an executive order forbidding the city jail to hold ICE detainees. In February 2020, Bottoms released Atlanta’s first LGBTQ Affairs report, focusing on how various policies, initiatives, and programs could improve the lives of LGBTQ Atlantans. In 2018 she had created the city’s LGBTQ advisory board and in December 2020, Bottoms appointed the city’s first director of LGBTQ Affairs, and announced the continued LGBTQ advisory board leadership.

Maria Feodorovna

Maria Feodorovna was Empress consort of Russia as the second wife of Tsar Paul I, and the founder of the Office of the Institutions of Empress Maria, an imperial government charitable agency. The institutions, many of which the Empress founded, managed orphanages, care for invalids, the blind and the deaf, education for women and children, poor houses and hospitals. She also gave political counsel to her children, who respected her greatly.

Agrippina the Elder

Agrippina I was the granddaughter of the Roman Emperor Augustus, and played a key role in the succession struggles under Tiberius (who ruled C.E. 14–37).

Ángela Jeria

Chilean archaeologist, the mother of Chilean president Michelle Bachelet and the wife of the Chilean Air Force

Zhang Yao’er

Zhang Yao’er (章要兒).z was an empress of the Chinese Chen Dynasty, and wife of the founding emperor Emperor Wu (Chen Baxian). She was known for being educated in mathematics and poetry. After her husband died, she tried to preserve the throne for her son, who was a prisoner of war at the time, but was convinced to give up the imperial seal so that her nephew could become emperor instead.