Category: President/Prime Minister/Head of State / page 5

Kamla Persad-Bissessar
Kamla Persad-Bissessar


Kamla Persad-Bissessar has served as the political leader of the United National Congress of Trinidad and Tobago since January 2010 and as the leader of the opposition since September 2015. Persad-Bissessar previously served as prime minister and as attorney general of Trinidad and Tobago. She is the first woman to serve as attorney general, acting prime minister and leader of the opposition in that country. Persad-Bissessar was born on April 4, 1952, in Siparia. She attended Norwood Technical College and later, the University of the West Indies (UWI) where she […]
Iveta Radicova
Iveta Radicova


Iveta Radicová served as prime minister of Slovakia from 2010 to 2012, the country's first female prime minister. Prior to becoming prime minister, Radicová was a professor of sociology and was Slovakia's first female professor of sociology. Radicová was born December 7, 1956, in Bratislava, Slovakia. She studied sociology at Comenius University and earned her Ph.D.; she also studied at the University of Oxford. Upon her return to Slovakia in 1991, Radicová founded the Center for Analysis of Social Policy, one of Slovakia's first non-government organizations, and served as its […]
Mary Robinson
Mary Robinson


Mary Robinson served as the first woman president of Ireland from 1990 to 1997. She was also the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, serving from 1997 to 2002. Prior to holding office, Robinson served as a senator from 1969 to 1989. Robinson was born on May 21, 1944, in Ballina, County Mayo. She is a barrister by profession and was appointed Reid Professor of Criminal Law in Trinity College Dublin when she was 25 years old. With her husband, Nicholas, whom she married in 1970, she founded the […]
Dilma Rousseff
Dilma Rousseff


Dilma Vana Rousseff served as the president of Brazil from January 1, 2011 to August, 31, 2016. She was the first woman to hold that office. Rousseff was born on December 14, 1947, in Belo Horizonte, the state capital of Minas Gerais. She received her primary education at the traditional Nossa Senhora de Sion School and her secondary education at the State Central High School in Belo Horizonte, then a hub of student activism. At the age of 16, she began her political career, taking part in movements against the […]
Jennifer Shipley
Jennifer M Shipley


Jennifer "Jenny" Shipley served as New Zealand's first woman prime minister from December 8, 1997, to December 5, 1999, assuming the position after staging a carefully planned coup against Jim Bolger. Shipley was born on February 4, 1952, in Gore, New Zealand. She graduated from Christchurch Teachers' College in 1972 and taught primary school. She joined the National Party in 1975 and, in 1987, she was elected to parliament. From 1990 to 1993, she served as minister of social welfare and, from 1990 to 1996, she served as minister of […]
Portia Simpson Miller
Portia Simpson Miller


Portia Simpson Miller served as prime minister of Jamaica from March 2006 to September 2007 and again from January 2012 to March 2016, the first female prime minister of that country. Simpson Miller was born Dec. 12, 1945, in Wood Hall, Saint Catherine parish, Jamaica. She earned a bachelor’s degree in public administration from Union Institute & University in 1997. In 1974, Simpson Miller was elected to the city council of the Kingston and St. Andrew Corporation, and in 1976 she was elected to Jamaica’s House of Representatives. She was […]
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf


Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has served as the 24th president of Liberia and the first elected female head of state in Africa since 2006. In 2011, Sirleaf received a Nobel Peace Prize for her peace work in Liberia and work for women's rights. Sirleaf was born in Monrovia on October 29, 1938. She grew up in Liberia and attended high school at the College of West Africa in Monrovia. She studied at Madison Business College, the University of Colorado and Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, where she obtained a master's […]
Erna Solberg
Erna Solberg


Erna Solberg has served as prime minister of Norway since October 16, 2013, the second female to hold that position. Solberg was born February 24, 1961. In her final year in high school, she was elected to the board of the School Student Union of Norway, and in her final year in college, she led the Students' League of the Conservative Party in Bergen. She graduated in 1986 with a cand.mag (Master of Arts) degree in sociology, political science, statistics and economics from the University of Bergen. Solberg began her […]
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher


Margaret Thatcher became the first (and for two decades the only) woman to lead a major Western democracy. She won three successive general elections and served as Great Britain's prime minister for more than eleven years (1979-90), a record unmatched in the twentieth century. Thatcher was born in 1925 in Grantham, England. She attended a local state school and continued onto Oxford, where she studied chemistry at Somerville College (1943-47). She ran as the Conservative candidate for the strong Labour seat of Dartford in the general elections of 1950 and […]
Helle Thorning-Schmidt
Helle Thorning-Schmidt


Helle Thorning-Schmidt served as prime minister of Denmark from 2011 to 2015 and the leader of the Social Democrats from 2005 to 2015. She is the first woman to hold either post. Thorning-Schmidt was born December 14, 1966 in Rødovre, Denmark. She earned a master’s degree in European studies in 1993 from the College of Europe in Brugge, Belgium and a master's degree of science in political science from the University of Copenhagen in 1994. Thorning-Schmidt worked as a consultant for the Danish Confederation of Trade Unions from 1997 to1999 […]