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Wu Yi (China's "Iron Lady"/Forbes Magazine's Second Most Powerful Woman in World 2004, 2005, 2007) |
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 Wu Yi (simplified Chinese: 吴仪; traditional Chinese: 吳儀; pinyin: Wú Yí; born November 1938 in Wuhan, Hubei, China) was one of four Vice Premiers of the State Council of the People's Republic of China, overseeing the country's economy until March 2008. Known as the "iron lady", Wu is one of the toughest negotiators in China's government, Forbes magazine considered her the second most powerful woman in the world in 2004, 2005 and 2007 and the third most powerful in 2006.
In April 1962, she joined the Communist Party of China. In August of the same year, she graduated from the Petroleum Refinery department at the Beijing Petroleum Institute, with a degree in petroleum engineering. She spent much of her career as a petroleum technician, eventually becoming deputy manager at the Beijing Dongfang Hong refinery, and assistant manager and party secretary at the Beijing Yanshan Petrochemical Corporation.
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Shania Twain (Singer/Songwriter/Five-Time Grammy Award Winner) |
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Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (President of Liberia/Only Elected Female Head of State in Africa) |
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 Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (born 29 October 1938) is the 24th and current President of Liberia. She served as Minister of Finance under President William Tolbert from 1979 until the 1980 coup d'état, after which she left Liberia and held senior positions at various financial institutions. She placed a distant second in the 1997 presidential election. Later, she was elected President in the 2005 presidential election and took office on 16 January 2006.
A peace movement called Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace led to her election, making Liberia the first African nation with a female president. The story is told in the 2008 documentary film Pray the Devil Back to Hell. Sirleaf is the first modern, and currently the only elected, female head of state in Africa.
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Benazir Bhutto (Former Prime Minister of Pakistan/First Woman Elected to Lead a Muslim State) |
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 Benazir Bhutto (Sindhi: بينظير ڀٽو; Urdu: بینظیر بھٹو, June 21 1953 – 27 December 2007) was a Pakistani politician who chaired the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), a centre-left political party in Pakistan. Bhutto was the first woman elected to lead a Muslim state, having twice been Prime Minister of Pakistan (1988–1990; 1993–1996).
She was Pakistan's first and to date only female prime minister. She was the eldest child of former Pakistani prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Nusrat Bhutto, and was the wife of current Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari.
Bhutto was sworn in as Prime Minister for the first time in 1988 at the age of 35, but was removed from office 20 months later under the order of then-president Ghulam Ishaq Khan on grounds of alleged corruption. In 1993 she was re-elected but was again removed in 1996 on similar charges, this time by President Farooq Leghari. She went into self-imposed exile in Dubai in 1998.
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Barbara Masekela (ANC Activist/Nelson Mandela’s Chief of Staff/Poet) |
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 Barbara Masekela was born on 18 July 1941 in Johannesburg. She completed her primary education at St. Michael's Anglican School inAlexandra township. Later she attended Inanda Girls Seminary between 1956 and1960, where she was exposed to leading lights of the African National Congress (ANC) such as Chief Albert Luthuli and MB Yengwa, who were some of the distinguished invited speakers tothe girls’ college.
Here, she also came into contact with Johnny Makatini, a leading ANC activist who recruited her into the ANC and became her mentor. After matriculation, Barbara worked in a textile factory in Johannesburg and through a family friend found employment in the subscriptiondepartment of New Age.
Her supervisor was Wolfie Kodesh and here she was introduced to activists of the ANC Youth League, the South African Communist Party and the ANC. In 1962, she attended Roma University in Lesotho and subsequently left South Africa in 1963 togo to Ghana.
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Queen Rania (Queen of Jordan/Mother/Campaigner) |
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 Rania Al Abdullah (Arabic: الملكة رانيا العبد الله Rānyā al-‘abdu l-Lāh) (born Rania al Yassin on 31 August 1970) is the current Queen consort of Jordan as the wife of King Abdullah II of Jordan.
As a global figure, and considered by some to be one of the world’s most powerful women, Queen Rania has focused her energy, at home and abroad, on a variety of causes, notably education.
In Jordan, her work focuses on the calibre and quality of education for Jordanian children, while abroad she advocates for global education and for world leaders to fulfill their commitments towards the second Millennium Development Goals, Universal Primary Education.
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Aishwarya Rai Bachchan (Actress/Model/Miss World) |
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 Aishwarya Rai Bachchan (born 1 November 1973) is an Indian actress and former Miss World. Before starting her acting career, she worked as a model and gained fame after winning the Miss World title in 1994. During her career, Rai has acted in over 40 movies in Hindi, English, Tamil and Bengali, which include a number of international productions.
Often cited by the media as the most beautiful woman in the world, Rai made her movie debut in Mani Ratnam's Tamil film Iruvar (1997) and had her first commercial success in the Tamil movie Jeans (1998). She came to the attention of Bollywood in the movie Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (1999), directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali. Her performance in the film won her the Filmfare Best Actress Award. In 2002 she appeared in Bhansali's next project, Devdas (2002), for which she won her second Filmfare Best Actress Award.
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