UN PHOTO
PRESIDENT OF THE EUROPEAN COUNCIL
pOw ERFUl wOMEN |DI S PATCHE S
Argentine President Cristina Elisabet Fernández de Kirchner is one of many female heads-ofstate in Latin America and the Caribbean.
a higher share of female parliamentarians (22.5 per cent) than Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the 2012 Women in Politics survey conducted by the InterParliamentary Union and UN Women. Argentines can justifiably take some credit for this condition, starting with their unceasing reverence for Eva Perón. Whatever one might think of the personality cult that continues to envelop Perón, she undoubtedly blazed a trail for women across her country and continent. This trendsetting has continued under Argentina’s current president, Cristina Elisabet Fernández de Kirchner. The first elected female president of her country, de Kirchner has since repeated her election victory of 2007 by becoming Latin America’s first re-elected female head of state. While it would be a stretch to draw any comparisons between Perón and de Kirchner, both share some biographical commonalities. Both of their careers have unfolded adjacent to powerful men — in the case of de Kirchner, her late husband, Nestor, whom she met when both were activists in the political movement of Perón’s husband, Juan. A lawyer by trade, observers expected that de Kirchner would be a stand-in for her husband, who had been barred from running for another term. But his death following a heart attack in 2010 gave de DIPLOMAT AND INTERNATIONAL CANADA
Kirchner a chance to carve out her own legacy. While her tenure has not been without controversies — claims that she was suffering from thyroid cancer proved to be simply false — de Kirchner has led Argentina through a relatively prosperous period featuring record employment growth and shrinking poverty rolls. Others, however, will decide whether her reign will be memorable.
8. Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir PRIME MINISTER OF ICELAND
The first openly lesbian head of state knows a thing or two about turbulence — be it political or otherwise. A former flight attendant with the national airline, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir was readying herself for retirement after more than three decades in elected politics when the gale-force winds of the unfolding global financial crisis suddenly shifted the course of her career in early 2009. As the country careened into a deep spin following the collapse of its banking system, Sigurðardóttir found herself in charge of a caretaker government cobbled together after angry citizens had pushed the ruling Conservatives out of power.
Icelandic Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir returned to politics after Iceland’s economy tanked.
Critical of the celebrated financiers (the so-called New Vikings) who had caused the calamity in the first place, Sigurðardóttir won a mandate to wipe away the mess in April 2009 and became Iceland’s first female prime minister. Yet for all the tumultuous circumstances that have led to the rise of Sigurðardóttir, her sexuality has hardly caused a stir in Iceland, one of the first countries to decriminalize gay sex (1940) and approve civil partnerships (1996). In fact, it has not mattered at all. But her calm, competent manner has, for now, given Icelanders the confidence that their small country might make it through after all, as its economy shows signs of recovery, a rare development in Europe. Iceland has also become the first country to criminally prosecute one of its former leaders for his part in the financial meltdown — Geir Haarde, Sigurðardóttir’s disgraced predecessor.
9. Sheikh Hasina
CURRENT BANGLADESHI PRIME MINISTER
Khaleda Zia FORMER BANGLADESHI PRIME MINISTER
One of the poorest countries in the world, with a wretchedly long history of man57