Resilience [Forging Ahead] Part XX – By Bashorun J.K. Randle

John Cleese and Sacha Baron Cohen have been truly amazing. They came up with the brilliant idea of devoting a whole day to extoling the virtues and superlative achievements of women in various fields of human endeavour – as a counterpoise or complement to “ME TOO”. It has been a roaring success on Resilience Television with viewership going through the roof even though there was no prior announcement of the day selected for this fantastic innovation.

Some of the champions featured were:

(i) Ada Hegerberg (Football)

Hegerberg was born in Molde, Norway on 10^th July 1996 but grew up in Sunndalsøra where she played for Sunndal Fotball Club along with her older sister Andrine. In 2007, their family moved to Kolbotn, where the sisters later joined Kolbotn IL.

She made her debut for Kolbotn in 2010. On 6 August 2011, she scored three goals in seven minutes as Røa were beaten 4–1, with Andrine scoring the last goal. Aged 16, this made her the youngest player ever to have scored a hat-trick in Toppserien. While still 16 years old, she finished as Kolbotn‘s top scorer in the 2011 Toppserien season and was voted as the league’s Young Player of the Year. Ahead of the 2012 season, both Hegerberg sisters joined Stabæk. During a match against Fart (sic) in May 2012, she scored five goals during the first half of Stabæk’s 8–2 win. At this stage the sisters were considered to be two of the biggest talents in Norwegian women’s football, and Ada won the Statoil “Talent of the Month” award for the second time in May 2012. She became top goalscorer in the 2012 Toppserien with 25 goals in 18 matches. She also contributed two goals in the semi-final of the 2012 Norwegian Women’s Cup, when Amazon Grimstad were beaten 3–0. Stabæk’s 4–0 final victory over Røa saw Hegerberg score a hat-trick.

In 2013, she and her sister signed contracts with the German side 1. FFC Turbine Potsdam until 30 June 2014, where they became teammates of their countrywoman Maren Mjelde. Hegerberg scored in

her Bundesliga debut when SC Freiburg was beaten 3–1. In their first season in Germany, the Hegerbergs and Turbine finished second in both the 2012–13 Bundesliga and the 2012–13 DFB-Pokal.

In the summer of 2014, she transferred to Olympique Lyonnais. Hegerberg had a very successful first season in France. She scored 26 goals in 22 league games, leading Lyon to a ninth consecutive Division 1 Féminine title. In the Coupe de France Féminine Final, Hegerberg scored the tying goal in the 47th minute, eventually culminating in a 2–1 victory over Montpellier. Hegerberg returned to Lyon for the 2015–16 campaign.

On 27 September, she scored a hat-trick in Lyon’s 5–0 victory against rival PSG. Hegerberg became the first player to score a hat-trick against PSG since Julie Morel in October 2008. In November, Hegerberg reached an agreement on a contract extension to stay with the club through the 2019 season. Lyon retained the league title for the tenth time in a row on 8 May 2016. Hegerberg finished the season as the top scorer of the league with 33 goals in 21 appearances. One week later, Hegerberg secured the Coupe de France with Lyon. In UEFA Women’s Champions League action, Lyon went on to win the competition behind Hegerberg’s 13 goals in 9 matches, to complete a treble.

On 3 December 2018, Hegerberg became the first ever winner of the Ballon d’Or Féminin. There was controversy during the ceremony, however, as the host, DJ Martin Solveig, asked Hegerberg upon receiving the award if she wanted to dance in celebration and “knew how to twerk“, who in turn responded “no”. His comments were criticised as sexist in the media; he later apologised for his remark. Regarding the incident, Hegerberg later commented: “He came to me afterwards and was really sad that it went that way. I didn’t really consider it sexual harassment or anything at the moment. I was just happy to do the dance and win the Ballon d’Or.” Concerning her award, she also added: “It’s incredible. This is a great motivation to continue working hard and we will continue to work together to win more titles. I wanted to end with some words for young girls around the world: believe in yourselves.”

Head to head with Paris Saint-Germain all season long, Lyon crushed their rivals (5-0) on 13 April 2019, with a goal and an assist for Hegerberg, a major individual performance. Lyon secured the title 10 days later. After scoring the only goal of the Coupe de France semi-final against Grenoble Foot 38, Hegerberg was involved in two of the three goals in the final against Lille OSC (3-1), winning yet another competition.

On 18 May 2019, Hegerberg delivered a Player of the Match performance in the 2019 UEFA Women’s Champions League Final. With a hat-trick in just 16 minutes, she became the first player to score three goals in a UWCL final.

Lyon completed the treble against FC Barcelona (4-1), winning a fourth UWCL trophy in a row, a unique performance in modern football. By the end of the season, Hegerberg had won 13 out of 15 trophies possible in her stay with Lyon.

On 30 October 2019, she became the UEFA Women’s Champions League all-time top scorer, after scoring her 53rd goal in her 50th appearance.

 

(ii) Martina Navratilova (Tennis)

Martina Navratilova, (born October 18, 1956, Prague, Czechoslovakia [now in Czech Republic]), Czech American tennis player who dominated women’s tennis in the late 1970s and the ’80s.

Navratilova played in her first tennis tournament at eight years of age. A left-handed player who ranked number one in Czechoslovakia from 1972 to 1975, she won international notice when she led her team to victory in the 1975 Federation Cup. In that year she went into exile in the United States because of the Czech government’s attempts to limit her tennis career. She was stripped of her Czech citizenship, and in 1981 she became a U.S. citizen. In 2008 she regained her Czech citizenship, thereby gaining dual citizenship.

From 1975 Navratilova was consistently one of the top five women tennis players. She made her first claim to the number-one position in 1978, after winning the Virginia Slims championship and the Wimbledon women’s singles final. In 1979 she again won the Wimbledon women’s singles as well as the women’s doubles and was ranked the undisputed top player.

In 1982 Navratilova won 90 of 93 matches, including 41 consecutive matches, and 15 tournaments, notably the Wimbledon women’s singles and the French Open women’s singles. The following year she won 86 of 87 matches, the U.S. Open women’s singles, the Wimbledon women’s singles, and the Australian Open women’s singles. Beginning with the 1983 Wimbledon title, she won six consecutive Grand Slam women’s singles titles. The 1980s also marked the height of her friendly rivalry with Chris Evert. Navratilova pitted her serve-and-volley game against Evert’s baseline style in 80 matches, winning 43 of them. In 1986 at Filderstadt, West Germany, she became the second player in modern tennis to win 1,000 matches.

By 1990 Navratilova had won the women’s singles championships of the French Open twice (1982, 1984), the Australian Open three times (1981, 1983, 1985), the U.S. Open four times (1983, 1984, 1986, 1987), and Wimbledon a record nine times (1978, 1979, 1982–87, 1990). In 1987, along with her singles championship, she won both the women’s doubles and the mixed doubles to become the first triple-crown champion at the U.S. Open since 1970. On winning her 158th title in 1992 in Chicago, Navratilova had accumulated more championships than any other player, male or female, in the history of tennis. She retired from singles play after the 1994 season, having won 167 titles in all.

Over the next two years Navratilova competed in only a handful of doubles events, and from 1997 to 1999 she did not play on tour. In 2000, however, she returned to professional play, competing in the doubles event at several tournaments, including Wimbledon. That same year she was inducted into the Tennis Hall of Fame. In 2003 she won the mixed doubles (with Leander Paes) at Wimbledon to tie Billie Jean King for most Wimbledon titles overall (20). With the victory, Navratilova, age 46, also became the oldest player to win at Wimbledon. After winning the mixed doubles at the U.S. Open in 2006, she retired from competitive play. Her career totals included 59 Grand Slam titles: 18 singles, 31 doubles, and 10 mixed doubles.

Navratilova’s autobiography, Martina (written with George Vecsey), was published in 1985. She also wrote, with Liz Nickles, a series of mysteries centred on the character Jordan Myles, a former tennis champion turned sleuth. The Total Zone (1994) was followed by Breaking Point (1996) and Killer Instinct (1997). One of the first sports superstars to acknowledge publicly that she was a lesbian, Navratilova also was active in the gay rights movement.”

 

(iii) QATAR AIRWAYS FIRST AFRICAN (NIGERIAN) FEMALE PILOT, ADEOLA SOWEMIMO

“World Class airline Qatar airways has hired its first African female pilot Adeola Sowemimo. She is also the first woman to have flown a Boeing 787 Dreamliner across the Atlantic.

Adeola hails from Ogbomoso, Oyo state Nigeria. She graduated from the Ladoke Akintola University based in Ogbomoso. She later completed from a top professional pilot training school located in Ormond Beach, Florida.

 

(iv) Greta Thunberg:

Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg who was born on 3 January 2003) is a Swedish environmental activist. She has gained international recognition for promoting the view that humanity is facing an existential crisis arising from climate change. Thunberg is known for her youth and her straightforward speaking manner, both in public and to political leaders and assemblies, in which she criticises world leaders for their failure to take sufficient action to address the climate crisis.

Thunberg’s activism started after convincing her parents to adopt several lifestyle choices to reduce their own carbon footprint. In August 2018, at age 15, she started spending her school days outside the Swedish parliament to call for stronger action on climate change by holding up a sign reading Skolstrejk för klimatet (School strike for climate). Soon, other students engaged in similar protests in their own communities. Together, they organised a school climate strike movement under the name Fridays for Future. After Thunberg addressed the 2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference, student strikes took place every week somewhere in the world. In 2019, there were multiple coordinated multi-city protests involving over a million students each. To avoid flying, Thunberg sailed to North America where she attended the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit. Her speech there, in which she exclaimed “how dare you”, was widely taken up by the press and incorporated into music.

Her sudden rise to world fame has made her both a leader and a target for critics. Her influence on the world stage has been described by The Guardian and other newspapers as the “Greta effect”. She has received numerous honours and awards including: honorary Fellowship of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society; Time magazine’s 100 most influential people and the youngest Time Person of the Year; inclusion in the Forbes list of The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women (2019) and two consecutive nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize (2019 and 2020).

 

(v) Naomi Osaka

Naomi Osaka is a professional tennis player who represents Japan. Osaka has been ranked No. 1 by the Women’s Tennis Association, and is the first Asian player to hold the top ranking in singles. She has won five titles on the WTA Tour, including two titles at both the Grand Slam and Premier Mandatory levels.

Ōsaka Naomi, was born on October 16, 1997) is a professional tennis player who represents Japan. Osaka has been ranked No. 1 by the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA), and is the first Asian player to hold the top ranking in singles. She has won five titles on the WTA Tour, including two titles at both the Grand Slam and Premier Mandatory levels. Osaka won her first two Grand Slam singles titles in back-to-back Grand Slam tournaments at the 2018 US Open and the 2019 Australian Open, and is the first player to achieve this feat since Jennifer Capriati in 2001.

Born in Japan to a Haitian father and a Japanese mother, Osaka has lived and trained in the United States since she was three years old. She came to prominence at the age of sixteen when she defeated former US Open champion Samantha Stosur in her WTA Tour debut at the 2014 Stanford Classic. Two years later, she reached her first WTA final at the 2016 Pan Pacific Open in Japan to enter the top 50 of the WTA rankings. Osaka made her breakthrough into the upper echelon of women’s tennis in 2018 when she won her first WTA title at Indian Wells. Later in the year, she defeated 23-time Grand Slam singles champion Serena Williams in the final of the US Open to become the first Japanese player to win a Grand Slam singles title.

Osaka is known for her multi-ethnic background and her shy, candid personality. With her diverse background and status as a Grand Slam singles champion, she is one of the most marketable women athletes in the world and was the highest-earning female athlete in endorsement income in 2020. On the court, Osaka has an aggressive playing style with a powerful serve that can reach 125 miles per hour (200 km/h).

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(vi) Valerie Ann Amos (Baroness Amos)

(Master of University College, Oxford University)

She was former Director of London School of Oriental Studies.

Valerie Ann Amos, Baroness Amos CH, PC. She was born on the 13^th March 1954 at Georgetown, Guyana. She is a British Labour Party politician and diplomat who served as the eighth UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. Before her appointment to the UN, she served as British High Commissioner to Australia.

She was created a life peer in 1997, serving as Leader of the House of Lords and Lord President of the Council from 2003 to 2007.

When Amos was appointed Secretary of State for International Development on 12 May 2003, following the resignation of Clare Short, she became the first Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) woman to serve as a Cabinet minister.  She left the Cabinet when Gordon Brown became Prime Minister.

In July 2010, Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon announced Baroness Amos’s  appointment to the role of Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. She took up the position on 1 September 2010 and remained in the post until 29 May 2015. In September 2015 Amos was appointed Director of SOAS, (School of African and Oriental Studies), University of London, becoming the first black woman to lead a university school in the United Kingdom. In 2019, it was announced that Amos will become the first-ever black head of an Oxford college, (University College) from 1 August 2020, succeeding Sir Ivor Crewe.

 

(vii) Michelle Obama

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama is an American lawyer and author who was the first lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017. She is married to the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama. She is the first African-American First Lady of the United States.

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama (née Robinson; born January 17, 1964) in Chicago, Illinois.

Michelle Robinson, who grew up on Chicago’s South Side, was the daughter of Marian, a homemaker, and Frasier Robinson, a worker in the city’s water-purification plant. She studied sociology and African American studies at Princeton University (B.A., 1985) in New Jersey before attending Harvard Law School (J.D., 1988). Returning to Chicago, she took a job as a junior associate at Sidley & Austin (now Sidley Austin LLP), where she specialized in intellectual property law. In 1989, while at the firm, she met Barack Obama, who had been hired as a summer associate. Seeking a more public-service-oriented career path, in 1991 she became an assistant to Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. The following year she and Barack, then a community organizer, were married. From 1992 to 1993 Michelle was the assistant commissioner for the Chicago Department of Planning and Development, and in 1993 she founded the Chicago branch of Public Allies, a leadership-training programme for young adults; she served as the branch’s executive director until 1996.

Barack was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996, and that year Michelle became the associate dean of student services at the University of Chicago, where she helped organize the school’s community outreach programs. In 2002 she became the executive director of community and external affairs for the University of Chicago. Two years later Barack was elected to the U.S. Senate and came to national prominence with a speech he gave on the final night of the 2004 Democratic National Convention. In 2005 she became vice president of community and external affairs for the University of Chicago Medical Centre.

 

(viii) J.K. Rowling

Joanne Rowling CH, OBE, HonFRSE, FRCPE, FRSL born 31 July 1965), better known by her pen name J. K. Rowling, is a British author, screenwriter, producer, and philanthropist. She is best known for writing the Harry Potter fantasy series, which has won multiple awards and sold more than 500 million copies, becoming the best-selling book series in history. The books are the basis of a popular film series, over which Rowling had overall approval on the scripts and was a producer on the final films. She also writes crime fiction under the pen name Robert Galbraith.

Born in Yate, Gloucestershire, Rowling was working as a researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty International when she conceived the idea for the Harry Potter series while on a delayed train from Manchester to London in 1990. The seven-year period that followed saw the death of her mother, birth of her first child, divorce from her first husband, and relative poverty until the first novel in the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, was published in 1997. There were six sequels, of which the last, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was released in 2007. Since then, Rowling has written five books for adult readers: The Casual Vacancy (2012) and—under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith—the crime fiction Cormoran Strike series, which consists of The Cuckoo’s Calling (2013), The Silkworm (2014), Career of Evil (2015), and Lethal White (2018). Between 26 May and 10 July 2020, her “political fairytale” for children, The Ickabog, was released in instalments in an online version.

Rowling has lived a “rags to riches” life in which she progressed from living on benefits to being named the world’s first billionaire author by Forbes. However, Rowling disputed the assertion, saying she was not a billionaire. Forbes reported that she lost her billionaire status after giving away much of her earnings to charity. Her UK sales total in excess of £238 million, making her the best-selling living author in Britain.

 The 2020 Sunday Times Rich List estimated Rowling’s fortune at £795 million, ranking her as the 178th richest person in the UK. Time named her a runner-up for its 2007 Person of the Year, noting the social, moral, and political inspiration she has given her fans. Rowling was appointed a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) at the 2017 Birthday Honours for services to literature and philanthropy. In October 2010, she was named the “Most Influential Woman in Britain” by leading magazine editors. Rowling has supported multiple charities, including Comic Relief, One Parent Families, and Multiple Sclerosis Society of Great Britain, as well as launching her own charity, Lumos.

 

(ix) Kristalina Georgieva

Kristalina Ivanova Georgieva-Kinova is a Bulgarian economist serving as Chairwoman and Managing Director of the International

Monetary Fund since 2019. She was born on the 13^th August, 1953 at Sofia, Bulgaria.

She was the Chief Executive of the World Bank Group from 2017 to 2019 and served as Acting President of the World Bank Group from 1 February 2019 to 8 April 2019 following the resignation of Jim Yong Kim. She previously served as Vice-President of the European Commission under Jean-Claude Juncker from 2014 to 2016.

From 1993 to 2010, she served in a number of positions in the World Bank Group, eventually rising to become its vice president and corporate secretary in March 2008. She has also served as a member of the board of trustees and associate professor in the economics department of the University of National and World Economy in Bulgaria. On 27 September 2016, the Bulgarian government nominated Kristalina Georgieva for the post of United Nations Secretary-General. Her short run for secretary-general at the UN ended following a vote at the UN Security Council on 5 October, where Georgieva ranked number eight out of ten candidates. In the same vote, António Guterres got the support of the Security Council for the post of UN Secretary-General. On 28 October, the World Bank announced that Georgieva would become the first CEO of the bank starting on 2 January 2017. On 29 September 2019 Georgieva was named the next managing director of the International Monetary Fund. She was the only nominee for the job and is the first person from an emerging country to hold this office.

Georgieva was named “European of the Year” in 2010 and “EU Commissioner of the Year” as an acknowledgment of her work, in particular, her handling of the humanitarian disasters in Haiti and Pakistan.

 

(x) Christine Lagarde

Christine Madeleine Odette Lagarde was born on 1st January 1956) is a French politician and lawyer serving as President of the European Central Bank since November 2019. Between July 2011 and November 2019, she served as chair and managing director (MD) of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Lagarde previously held various senior ministerial posts in the Government of France: she was Minister of the Economy, Finance and Industry (2007–2011), Minister of Agriculture and Fishing (2007) and Minister of Commerce (2005–2007). Lagarde was

the first woman to become finance minister of a G8 economy (and the only woman as of 2020) and is the first woman to head the ECB and IMF.

A noted antitrust and labour lawyer, Lagarde was the first female chair of major international law firm Baker & McKenzie, between 1999 and 2004. On 16 November 2009, the Financial Times ranked her the best finance minister in the Eurozone. On 5 July 2011, Lagarde replaced Dominique Strauss-Kahn as managing director of the IMF for a five-year term. Her appointment was the 11th consecutive appointment of a European to head the IMF. She was re-elected by consensus for a second five-year term, starting 5 July 2016, being the only candidate nominated for the post. In December 2016, a French court found her guilty of negligence relating to her role in the Bernard Tapie arbitration, but did not impose a penalty. In 2019, Forbes ranked her number two on its World’s 100 Most Powerful Women list.

 

(xi) Angela Merkel

Angela Dorothea Merkel is a German politician who has been Chancellor of Germany since 2005. She was born on the 17^th July, 1954 in Hamburg, Germany. She served as the Leader of the Christian Democratic Union from 2000 to 2018.

The eighth and current holder of the office is Angela Merkel, who was elected in 2005 and re-elected in 2009, 2013 and 2018. She is the first woman to be elected chancellor, and the first chancellor since the fall of the Berlin Wall to have been raised in the former East Germany (GDR).

Merkel has been widely described as the de facto leader of the European Union, the most powerful woman in the world, and by some commentators as the “leader of the free world“. Merkel was born in Hamburg in then-West Germany, moving to East Germany as an infant when her father, a Lutheran clergyman, received a pastorate in Perleberg. She obtained a doctorate in quantum chemistry in 1986 and worked as a research scientist until 1989. Merkel entered politics in the wake of the Revolutions of 1989, briefly serving as deputy spokesperson for the first democratically elected East German Government led by Lothar de Maizière. Following German reunification in 1990,

Merkel was elected to the Bundestag for the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

As the protégée of Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Merkel was appointed as Minister for Women and Youth in 1991, later becoming Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety in 1994. After the CDU lost the 1998 federal election, Merkel was elected CDU General Secretary, before becoming the party’s first female leader two years later in the aftermath of a donations scandal that toppled Wolfgang Schäuble.

Following the 2005 federal election, Merkel was appointed the first female Chancellor of Germany, leading a grand coalition consisting of the CDU, its Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU) and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). At the 2009 federal election, the CDU obtained the largest share of the vote, and Merkel was able to form a coalition government with the Free Democratic Party (FDP). In the 2013 federal election, Merkel’s CDU won a landslide victory with 41.5% of the vote and formed a second grand coalition with the SPD, after the FDP lost all of its representation in the Bundestag. At the 2017 federal election, Merkel led the CDU to become the largest party for the fourth time, and was sworn in for a joint-record fourth term as Chancellor on 14 March 2018.

In 2007, Merkel served as President of the European Council and played a central role in the negotiation of the Treaty of Lisbon and the Berlin Declaration. One of Merkel’s consistent priorities has been to strengthen transatlantic economic relations. Merkel played a crucial role in managing the financial crisis at the European and international level, and she has been referred to as “the decider”. In domestic policy, health care reform, problems concerning future energy development and more recently her government’s approach to the ongoing migrant crisis have been major issues during her chancellorship. She has served as senior G7 leader since 2014, and previously from 2011 to 2012. In 2014 she became the longest-serving incumbent head of government in the European Union. In October 2018, Merkel announced that she would stand down as Leader of the CDU at the party convention in December 2018, and would not seek a fifth term as Chancellor in 2021.

 

(xii) Mette Frederiksen was born on the 19 November 1977. She is a Danish politician who has been Prime Minister of Denmark since June 2019 and Leader of the Social Democrats since June 2015. The second woman to hold either office, she is also the youngest Prime Minister in Danish history.

Besides a very brief career as a trade unionist (2000–2001), Frederiksen has never had any employment outside politics. She was first elected to the Folketing in the 2001 general election, representing Copenhagen County. After the Social Democrats won the 2011 general election, she was appointed Minister of Employment by Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt. She was later promoted to become Minister of Justice in 2014. After the Social Democrats’ narrow defeat in the 2015 general election, Thorning-Schmidt stood down and Frederiksen won the subsequent leadership election to replace her, becoming Leader of the Opposition. Frederiksen led her party into the 2019 general election which resulted in the bloc of left-wing and centre-left parties (her Social Democrats, the Social Liberals, the Socialist People’s Party, the Red–Green Alliance, the Faroese Social Democratic Party and Greenland’s Siumut and Inuit Ataqatigiit) winning a majority in the Folketing. Frederiksen was subsequently commissioned by Queen Margrethe II to lead ultimately successful negotiations to form a new government and was sworn in as Prime Minister on 27 June.

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(xiii) Sheikh Hasina Wajed

The Prime Minister of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh is the Head of the Government of Bangladesh. The Prime Minister and the Cabinet are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the Parliament, to their political party and ultimately to the electorate.

The position was taken over by the military during years of 1975–78, 1982-86 and 1990-91 due to imposed martial law. In each of these periods, the national government leadership was in control of the military with the executive authority of the President and the Prime Minister. During the period between 1996 and 2008, The Chief Adviser of the Caretaker Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh exercised authority as per the constitution as the Head of government for 90 days during transition between

one elected government to another. The Chief Adviser headed an Advisory Committee comprising ten Advisers. With powers roughly equivalent to those of the Prime Minister of an elected government, his executive power was constrained with certain constitutional limitations. The system was scrapped in 2011 by 15th amendment of constitution to allow political government to conduct any General Election in future.

The current Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina Wazed, was appointed on 6 January 2009 by the President of Bangladesh and she is also the longest serving prime minister in the country’s history.

 

(xiv) Sibel Siber is a Turkish Cypriot She served as the Prime Minister of Northern Cyprus between 13 June 2013, following the fall of the government of İrsen Küçük in a vote of no confidence, and 2 September 2013. She was the first woman to occupy this post. As of November 2015, Siber was the Speaker of Parliament, the Assembly of the Republic of Northern Cyprus. She was the second woman to occupy this post, after Fatma Ekenoğlu.

Sibel Siber (née Adademir) was born in Nicosia on 13 December 1960. Her father, Altay Adademir, was a primary school teacher from the village of Melouseia in the Larnaca District; her mother, Aysel Adademir, was a housewife from the village of Klavdia. She has one sibling. She continually moved to different villages and cities in her childhood as her father was appointed to different schools. She lived respectively in Larnaca, Arsos and Klavdia, and moved to Tremetousia when she was seven. She would later recount her primary fear during childhood as travel, as many Turkish Cypriots went missing while on the roads, but highlight the peaceful interaction between the two communities in the mixed village of Tremetousia. She graduated from the Tremetousia Turkish Primary School and enrolled to the Nicosia Turkish Girls’ High School.

Siber was admitted to the Cerrahpaşa Medical Faculty of Istanbul University when she was 16, at a time when political incidents involving students were at their height. She completed the medical school and graduated as a physician on 5 April 1983. She completed her specialization in internal medicine in the Şişli Etfal Hospital in 1987, returned to Cyprus and started working at her private clinic. In 1989, she obtained a scholarship and was trained in diabetes and endocrinology at the University of Virginia, United States of America.

Her first published article, a critique of the healthcare system in Northern Cyprus, was published in 1983 in the newspaper with the highest circulation at the time.

 

(xv) Althea Gibson:

 Althea Neale Gibson was an American tennis player and professional golfer, and one of the first Black athletes to cross the colour line of international tennis. She was born on the 25^th August 1927 in Clarendon Country, South Carolina, United States.

 In 1956, she became the first African American to win a Grand Slam title (the French Championships). The following year she won both Wimbledon and the US Nationals (precursor of the US Open), then won both again in 1958 and was voted Female Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press in both years. In all, she won 11 Grand Slam tournaments: five singles titles, five doubles titles, and one mixed doubles title. Gibson was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame and the International Women’s Sports Hall of Fame. “She is one of the greatest players who ever lived,” said Bob Ryland, a tennis contemporary and former coach of Venus and Serena Williams. “Martina [Navratilova] couldn’t touch her. I think she’d beat the Williams sisters.” In the early 1960s she also became the first Black player to compete on the Women’s Professional Golf Tour.

At a time when racism and prejudice were widespread in sports and in society, Gibson was often compared to Jackie Robinson. “Her road to success was a challenging one,” said Billie Jean King, “but I never saw her back down.” “To anyone, she was an inspiration, because of what she was able to do at a time when it was enormously difficult to play tennis at all if you were Black,” said former New York City Mayor David Dinkins. “I am honoured to have followed in such great footsteps,” wrote Venus Williams. “Her accomplishments set the stage for my success, and through players like myself and Serena and many others to come, her legacy will live on.”

 

(xvi) Oprah Winfrey

 Oprah Gail Winfrey who was born in January 29, 1954 is an American talk show host, actress, television producer, media executive, and philanthropist. She is best known for her talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, broadcast from Chicago, which was the highest-rated television programme of its kind in history and ran in national syndication for 25 years from 1986 to 2011. Dubbed the “Queen of All Media”, she was the richest African American of the 20th century and North America’s first black multi-billionaire and she has been ranked the greatest black philanthropist in American history. By 2007, she was sometimes ranked as the most influential woman in the world.

Winfrey was born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a teenage single mother and later raised in inner-city Milwaukee. She has stated that she was molested during her childhood and early teens and became pregnant at 14; her son was born prematurely and died in infancy Winfrey was then sent to live with the man she calls her father, Vernon Winfrey, a barber in Tennessee, and landed a job in radio while still in high school. By 19, she was a co-anchor for the local evening news. Winfrey’s often emotional, extemporaneous delivery eventually led to her transfer to the daytime talk show arena, and after boosting a third-rated local Chicago talk show to first place, she launched her own production company and became internationally syndicated.

Credited with creating a more intimate, confessional form of media communication, Winfrey popularized and revolutionized the tabloid talk show genre pioneered by Phil Donahue. In 1994, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. By the mid-1990s, Winfrey had reinvented her show with a focus on literature, self-improvement, mindfulness, and spirituality. Though she was criticized for unleashing a confession culture, promoting controversial self-help ideas and having an emotion-centered approach, she has also been praised for overcoming adversity to become a benefactor to others. Winfrey had also emerged as a political force in the 2008 presidential race, delivering about one million votes to Barack Obama in the razor close 2008 Democratic primary. In 2013, Winfrey was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama and honorary doctorate degrees from Duke and Harvard Universities. In 2008, she formed her own network, Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN).

Winfrey has won many accolades throughout her career which includes 18 Daytime Emmy Awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award and the Chairman’s Award, 2 Primetime Emmy Awards, including the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award, a Tony Award, a Peabody Award and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, awarded by the Academy Awards and two additional Academy Award nominations.

 

(xvii) Mae Carol Jemison:

 Mae Carol Jemison (born October 17, 1956) is an American engineer, physician, and former NASA astronaut. She became the first black woman to travel into space when she served as a mission specialist aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour. Jemison joined NASA’s astronaut corps in 1987 and was selected to serve for the STS-47 mission, during which she orbited the Earth for nearly eight days on September 12–20, 1992.

Born in Alabama and raised in Chicago, Jemison graduated from Stanford University with degrees in chemical engineering as well as African and African-American studies. She then earned her medical degree from Cornell University. Jemison was a doctor for the Peace Corps in Liberia and Sierra Leone from 1983 until 1985 and worked as a general practitioner. In pursuit of becoming an astronaut, she applied to NASA.

Jemison left NASA in 1993 and founded a technology research company. She later formed a non-profit educational foundation and through the foundation is the principal of the 100 Year Starship project funded by DARPA. Jemison also wrote several books for children and appeared on television several times, including in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. She holds several honorary doctorates and has been inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame and the International Space Hall of Fame.

Women have made significant contributions to punk rock music and its subculture since its inception in the 1970s. In contrast to the rock music and heavy metal scenes of the 1970s, which were dominated by men, the anarchic, counter-cultural mindset of the punk scene in mid-and-late 1970s encouraged women to participate. This participation played a role in the historical development of punk music, especially in the US and UK at that time, and continues to influence and enable future generations. Women have participated in the punk scene as lead singers, instrumentalists, as all-female bands, zine contributors and fashion designers.

Rock historian Helen Reddington wrote that the popular image of young punk women musicians as focused on the fashion aspects of the scene (Fishnet stockings, spiky hair, etc.) was stereotypical. She states that many, if not all women punks were more interested in the ideology and socio-political implications, rather than the fashion. Music historian Caroline Coon contends that before punk, women in rock music were virtually invisible; in contrast, in punk, she argues, “It would be possible to write the whole history of punk music without mentioning any male bands at all – and I think a lot of [people] would find that very surprising.”

Johnny Rotten wrote that “During the Pistols era, women were out there playing with the men, taking us on in equal terms … It wasn’t combative, but compatible.” Chrissie Hynde echoed similar sentiments when discussing her start in the punk scene, “That was the beauty of the punk thing: sexual discrimination didn’t exist in that scene. The anti-establishment stance of punk opened the space for women who were treated like outsiders in a male-dominated industry. Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon states, “I think women are natural anarchists, because you’re always operating in a male framework.” Others take issue with the notion of equal recognition, such as guitarist Viv Albertine, who stated that “the A&R men, the bouncers, the sound mixers, no one took us seriously.. So, no, we got no respect anywhere we went. People just didn’t want us around.”

Female Pop Singers

• Shakira 02 February 1977, Colombian.
• Jennifer Lopez. 24 July 1969, American. Singer, Actress, Dancer.
• Dua Lipa. 22 August 1995, British. …
• Taylor Swift. 13 December 1989, American. …
• Katy Perry. 25 October 1984, American. …
• Lady Gaga. 28 March 1986, American. …
• Demi Lovato. 20 August 1992, American. …
• Dolly Parton. 19 January 1946, American.

Rose Christine Ossouka Raponda:

The first woman Prime Minister in Gabon.

The president reappeared in the media on Monday after several weeks of absence, pictured at a meeting of heads of the various branches of the armed forces and police.

Rose Christiane Ossouka Raponda is a Gabonese politician who is currently serving as Prime Minister of Gabon since 16 July 2020, making her the first female prime minister of the country. She previously served as the Mayor of Libreville and later as the country’s Defense Minister from February 2019 to July 2020. She was born in 1964 in Libreville, Gabon.

Raponda is a member of the Mpongwe people. Raponda received a degree in economics and public finance from the Gabonese Institute of Economy and Finance.

Raponda worked as Director General of the Economy and Deputy Director General of the Housing Bank of Gabon. She served as Budget Minister from February 2012 until January 2014. Raponda was elected Mayor of the capital city Libreville on 26 January 2014, representing the ruling Gabonese Democratic Party. She was the first woman to hold the position since 1956 and she served until 2019. She also became President of United Cities and Local Governments Africa.

On 12 February 2019, Raponda was appointed as the Defense Minister of Gabon by president Ali Bongo Ondimba after the failed coup in January 2019. Raponda replaced Etienne Massard Kabinda Makaga, a member of the Bongo family, who had held the position since 2016. On 16 July 2020, Raponda was appointed as the Prime Minister of Gabon, after her predecessor Julien Nkoghe Bekale stepped down. She is the first woman to hold the position. Her appointment is the fourth cabinet shuffle by Ondimba since the failed coup. Her appointment comes during the dual health and economic crises due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the fall in the price of oil, one of the country’s main resources.

Bashorun J.K. Randle is a former President of the Institute of the Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) and former Chairman of KPMG Nigeria and Africa Region.

He is currently the Chairman, JK Randle Professional Services