Iron Lady - Use in Politics

Use in Politics

Leaders who have earned the unofficial title (some of them postfactum) include:

• Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India from 1966–77 and again from 1980-84
• Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 (leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 until 1990) The phrase was coined by military journalist Captain Yuri Gavrilov in the Soviet newspaper Red Star on 24 January 1976. The nickname stuck firmly behind Thatcher. She is the subject of the 2011 biographical feature film The Iron Lady.
• Barbara Castle, a prominent British Labour Party politician, whose active political career spanned over 40 years.
• Golda Meir, the Prime Minister of Israel from 1969 to 1974
• Biljana Plavsic, the President and Vice-President of Republic of Srpska, and member of presidency of Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina active from 1990-2000 is known as "The Serbian Iron Lady"
• Benazir Bhutto, Prime Minister of Pakistan from 1988 until 1990 and 1993 until 1996.
• Joyce Banda, President of Malawi since April 7, 2012.
• Manuela Ferreira Leite, the Portuguese Minister of Education during Cavaco Silva's cabinet between 1993 and 1995, Minister of State and Finances during Durão Barroso cabinet between 6 April 2002 and 2004, and leader of the Portuguese PSD party between 2008 and 2010, was known as the "Portuguese Iron Lady", due to her alleged excessive politics of contention
• Yulia Tymoshenko, Prime Minister of Ukraine from 2007 to 2010 (and in 2005)
• Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga, President of Latvia from 1999 to 2007
• Helen Clark, Prime Minister of New Zealand from 1999 to 2008, and Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme since 2009
• Dilma Rousseff, President of Brazil since 2011
• Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the President of Liberia since 2006
• Dalia Grybauskaitė, the President of Lithuania since 2009
• Natalia Petkevich, First Deputy Head of the Administration of the President of Belarus since 2009
• Nilde Iotti, President of the