The most powerful women you have never heard of
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Transcript of The most powerful women you have never heard of
The Most Powerful Women You've Never Heard Of
Women have certainly proved their spirits in this male-dominated
world. Not only have they cut away from the stereotype, but they also
manage to come out shining dynamically in all fields be it politics or
entrepreneurship. While there are a few who are world famous and have
made their mark, foreign policy.com named the most powerful women
you've never heard of and the list includes:
Helen Clark (Administrator, U.N.
Development Program, New Zealand):
As New Zealand's prime minister, Helen Clark managed a decade of
economic growth and won three straight terms in her post after a long
career as a Labour Party legislator and cabinet minister. However, in less
than a year following her departure as Kiwi prime minister, Helen turned to
a much larger and more challenging stage. Since 2009, she has led the U.N.
Development Program (UNDP), the arm of the United Nations charged with
tackling the world's worst problems, from global poverty to corrupt
governance to health and environmental crises. Clark now oversees the
UNDP's nearly $5 billion annual budget and over 8,000 employees operating
in 177 countries. Cholera in Haiti and famine in Somalia may be far from
daily life for several New Zealanders, but Helen appears fearless. Her top
goal as administrator, she said, is no less than to eradicate extreme poverty
around the world.
Liu Yandong (State councilor, China):
As Mao Zedong famously said - they hold up "half the sky" but, women make
up just over 20 percent of the delegates in China's national legislature.
Former chemist Liu Yandong is the outlier: the only woman in the Politburo,
the 25-member influential decision-making body at the top of the Communist
Party pyramid. She is considered a close ally of President Hu Jintao, and
hence, has a good chance of ascending this fall to become one of the small
handful in the Politburo Standing Committee, the true ruling council at the
center of the system. Liu's politics differ from those of her contemporaries,
though some analysts think she favors increasing China's contacts with the
outside world. Liu, 66, has an honorary Ph.D. from the State University of
New York at Stony Brook and spoke at Yale University in 2009. Liu would be
the first woman in Chinese history to make it to the Standing Committee.
Lael Brainard (Treasury
undersecretary for international affairs, United States):
While Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's attention is focused on the
U.S. economy, tackling the brush fires of global economic calamity has fallen
to Lael Brainard. The Harvard-trained economist was born in 1962 and
raised in communist Poland as the daughter of a U.S. foreign-service officer.
She later went on to serve on the National Economic Council during Bill
Clinton's administration, working on the U.S. response to the Mexican peso
and Asian financial crises. During President Barack Obama's administration,
Lael has been consumed with Europe's financial corruption, shuffling back
and forth between Washington and European capitals in an effort to
convince leaders to prop up failing economies and to avoid further spread.
Lael has brought tireless diplomatic energy to the job.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (Finance minister, Nigeria):
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a former World Bank managing director, was
nominated by the governments of South Africa, Angola, and Nigeria to
succeed Robert Zoellick ,as president of the bank. By tradition, the spot has
been held by an American chosen by the U.S. government, but Okonjo-
Iweala thinks it's time for a change. "The balance of power in the world has
shifted," she said following her nomination, saying that developing countries
"need to be given a voice in running things." For now, she is more or less
running things in Nigeria, where she is in her second term as finance
minister. In her first term, the Harvard- and MIT-educated economist
received praises for negotiating billions of dollars in debt forgiveness with
Nigeria's international creditors and introducing a high-profile campaign
against corruption. This time her mission is made all the more difficult by a
campaign of terror by al Qaeda-affiliated Boko Haram militants. However,
the 57-year-old Okonjo-Iweala is determined to make Nigeria an attractive
place for international companies.
Mary Schapiro (Chair, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission,
United States):
Mary Schapiro was the first woman appointed permanent head of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and was bound to attract attention when President Obama nominated her in late 2008. She came to the SEC in the immediate aftermath of the $50 billion Bernard Madoff scandal and a market crash chiefly blamed on questionable financial practices and lax regulation. But Mary, who first held a seat on the SEC from 1988 to 1994, is no stranger to controversial politics. She left the SEC in the 1990s to run the biggest nongovernmental regulator of securities firms and spent the next decade going after industry insiders and critiquing Wall Street excesses. Ever since returning to the SEC, she has fought to re-establish public confidence in the commission, controlling an increase in the number of cases pursued by the SEC and arguing for the authority to impose higher financial penalties.
Theresa May (Home secretary, Britain):
Theresa May first came into the public consciousness in 2002, when her
Conservative Party was in the political wilderness and Tony Blair's Labour
government was at the peak of its popularity. That year, Theresa, a Member
of Parliament since 1997, spoke at a party conference and warned her Tory
colleagues that the public saw them as the "nasty party." The phrase became
a rallying cry for a new brand of Tory symbolized by May and her ideological
ally, David Cameron, who united traditional Conservative economic ideas
with moderate stances on gay rights and the environment. Cameron arrived
in 2010, at 10 Downing Street and named Theresa as his home secretary
and minister for women and equality. She's only the fourth woman to hold
one of Britain's four "Great Offices," which include prime minister,
Chancellor of the Exchequer, and foreign secretary.
Fatou Bensouda (Incoming chief prosecutor, International Criminal
Court, Gambia):
Over the course of Fatou Bensouda’s nine-year term, she will oversee cases
against the likes of Ivory Coast's Laurent Gbagbo, Sudan's Omar Hassan al-
Bashir, and the fugitive Lord's Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony. All are
notable not only for the scale of their violence but also for where they were
committed. Each of the court's 15 cases so far has involved incidents in
Africa, which, by Bensouda's estimate, has led to a perception of the ICC as
a "Western court" targeting her home continent. A native of Gambia, she has
held multiple cabinet positions, and was educated in Nigeria and rose to the
international stage when she worked in the prosecution of leaders of the
1994 Rwandan genocide. Now she's vowing to track the world's worst
perpetrators, with equal passion, "in Africa or outside Africa."
Marisela Morales (Attorney general, Mexico):
After Felipe Calderón’s (Mexican president) attorney general resigned last
year, he desperately needed to prove his government would finally crack
down on drug violence, which has claimed more than 40,000 lives since he
took office in 2006. Calderón's new pick, Marisela, not only was the first
female appointed to the post, but also had an international reputation for
her hard line on crime. A career prosecutor known for combining arrogance
with a strong compassion for victims, the 42-year-old tackled gang violence
in Mexico City before taking the helm of the country's organized crime
agency in 2008. There, she helped generate Mexico's first witness protection
program, launched a program to reunite trafficking victims with their
children, and fired more than two dozen officials, including her predecessor,
for selling tips to a leading drug gang. In her first 100 days as attorney
general, a massive number of 462 officials in her office were dismissed and
another 111 faced criminal charges.
Kim Kyong Hui (Politburo member, North Korea):
Still, some North Korea watchers believe the real power behind the throne
resides with Kim Kyong Hui and her husband, Jang Song Thaek. She is the
daughter of North Korea's founder, Kim Il Sung, the sister of the last ruler,
Kim Jong Il, and the aunt of the present leader, Kim Jong Un. Officially,
General Kim is the director of North Korea's Light Industry Department, but
because of her lineage, connections, and longevity she appears to have been
a member of North Korea's inner circle for more than 40 years. She and her
dominant husband might be instructing the country's untested young leader
from the wings.
100 days as attorney general, a massive number of 462 officials in her office
were dismissed and another 111 faced criminal charges.
Valerie Amos (U.N. emergency relief coordinator, Britain):
Valerie Amos, born in the former British colony of Guyana, was the first
black leader of the House of Lords and the first black woman appointed to a
cabinet position. As a British minister, Amos focused on efforts to lessen
poverty in Africa through debt relief and private investment initiatives. In
Valerie’s role as U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs and
emergency relief coordinator, in over the past two years, she has
increasingly started showing up as a player in the world's conflict zones. She
has launched relief efforts in earthquake-stricken Haiti, seen to the needs of
Libyan refugees along the border with Tunisia, and visited war-torn Somalia
as it struggled with an overwhelming famine.
The other powerful women on the list are Ann Dunwoody (Commanding
general, U.S. Army Materiel Command, United States), Atifete Jahjaga
(President, Kosovo), Lubna Al-Qasimi (Minister for foreign trade, United
Arab Emirates), Gleisi Hoffmann (Presidential chief of staff, Brazil), Cecilia
Malmstrom (European commissioner for home affairs, Sweden), Ileana Ros-
Lehtinen (Chair, House Foreign Affairs Committee, United States), Peng
Liyuan (Major general, People's Liberation Army, China), Sri Mulyani
Indrawati (Former finance minister, Indonesia), Fayza Abul Naga (Minister
of international cooperation, Egypt), Marina Berlusconi (Chair, Fininvest,
Italy), Josefina Vázquez Mota (Presidential candidate, Mexico), Valentina
Matviyenko(Speaker, Federation Council, Russia), Viviane Reding (European
commissioner for justice, fundamental rights, and citizenship, Luxembourg),
Lindiwe Mazibuko (Party leader, Democratic Alliance, South Africa)and
Hanan Ashrawi (Member, PLO executive committee, West Bank).