Politics Archives - Page 55 of 58

Radha Poonoosamy

Radha Poonoosamy was a Mauritian politician who served as the country’s first female cabinet minister and was a member of the executive committee of the African National Congress (ANC). She was also an activist, campaigning for women’s rights and against apartheid and anti-Indian discrimination in her home country of South Africa. She continued her activism after moving to Mauritius in 1952, and was elected as a Member of Parliament in 1975. She was appointed the inaugural minister in charge of the newly formed Ministry of Women’s Affairs, a role in which she helped passed laws against gender discrimination.

Íngrid Betancourt

Íngrid Betancourt Pulecio is a Colombian politician, former senator and anti-corruption activist, particularly political corruption.

Vida Ognjenović

Vida Ognjenović is a Serbian theater director, writer, professor and diplomat.

Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr

When she was elected mayor of Freetown in May 2018 (winning almost 60% of the votes), Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr was the city’s first female mayor in nearly 40 years.
Aki-Sawyerr decided to run for mayor after overseeing Operation Clean Freetown, a government initiative that was part of a large post-Ebola recovery effort that began in 2016. The project’s goal was to “[reduce] the risk of epidemics by improving solid waste management in the city.”
“I came face to face with how bad things were” in Freetown, she later said. “I decided I had to run.”
Continuing this work in office, her first priority was to identify the locations with the most egregiously clogged gutters that were missed in Operation Clean Freetown and have them cleared to enable water flow.
While earning her bachelor’s degree in Economics at Fourah Bay College, Aki-Sawyerr was active with AIESEC (the International Association of Students in Economics and Management) and became the first African on the organisation’s Brussels-based International Exchange Committee in 1988.
Aki-Sawyerr’s work during Sierra Leone’s Ebola crisis was recognized with an Ebola Gold Medal by Ernest Bai Koroma in December 2015. In January 2016, she was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Queen Elizabeth II.

Hanan Ashrawi

Hanan Daoud Mikhael Ashrawi is a Palestinian politician, activist and scholar who served as a member of the Leadership Committee and as an official spokesperson of the Palestinian delegation to the Middle East peace process, starting with the Madrid Peace Conference of 1991.

Anneli Jäätteenmäki

Anneli Tuulikki Jäätteenmäki is a Finnish politician who became the first female Prime Minister of Finland on 17 April 2003, but resigned only months later on 18 June 2003, due to accusations that she had lied to Parliament and the public about how she had acquired confidential Foreign Ministry documents which she used for political purposes during the election campaign. She had 1987 previously bee elected to the Finnish Parliament (Eduskunta) in 1987 and served as Minister of Justice from 1994 to 1995. She was elected as chairwoman of the Centre Party of Finland from 18 June 2000 to 5 October 2003 and served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Finland from 2004 until 2019.

Ruby Thoma

Ruby Thoma is a Nauruan politician who became the country’s first woman Member of Parliament when she was elected in 1986. Throughout her career, she was the only woman in the Nauruan Parliament – no other woman was elected until Charmaine Scotty in the 2013 general election.
She had previously unsuccessfully stood as a candidate for the 1983 general election, and was supported by women who believed that voters would benefit from having an educated woman, who would defend the interests of women and children, in Parliament. She encountered resistance, including from female voters who told her that politics should be left to men.
She was appointed Minister for Finance, from December 1986 until the government was brought down upon losing the confidence of Parliament in August 1989. Thoma kept her seat in Parliament in the subsequent general election, but lost in the 1992 election. She founded the People’s Movement Association to oppose what she considered wasteful public spending by President Bernard Dowiyogo’s government. She was re-elected to Parliament in 1995, but her political career ended when she lost her seat in 1997.

Nyimasata Sanneh-Bojang

Nyimasata Sanneh-Bojang was a Gambian politician and activist. She became the first woman to be elected to the Gambian National Assembly when she won the seat of Northern Kombo for the People’s Progressive Party in 1982.

Jemimah Gecaga

Jemimah Gecaga was the first woman to serve in the legislature of Kenya. In 1952, she founded Maendeleo Ya Wanawake, an organisation that continues to advocate for women’s rights and gender equity in Kenya to this day. In 1958, she was nominated to the Legislative Council in Kenya and became the first woman to serve in the country’s parliament of the country, serving until 1962. She later served as President of the YWCA in Kenya, lectured in home economics at Jeanes School (The Kenya School of Government) and worked as a director at Skyline Advertising. In 1969, she was again nominated as a member of parliament in 1969, serving until 1974.

Alba Roballo

Alba Roballo was a prominent Afro-Uruguayan lawyer, poet and politician, who was Uruguay’s first woman Cabinet member, first woman Culture Minister, and first woman elected to the (then collective) Municipal Council of Montevideo, Uruguay.