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.

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 sworn-in 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 Italian-American 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.

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.

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).

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 repre-sentative Carol Moseley-Braun 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 vice-presidential 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 January 28, 1986, the world watched in horror as the

United States space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after takeoff.

Television film footage

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.