Pauline Marois

Pauline Marois (born March 29, 1949) is the 30th and current Premier of Quebec and leader of the Parti Québécois, representing the riding of Charlevoix–Côte-de-Beaupré in the National Assembly of Quebec. On September 4, 2012, Marois led her party to victory in the Quebec general election, thus becoming the first female premier in the province's history.

Born in a working class family, Marois studied in social work at Université Laval, married businessman Claude Blanchet and became an activist in grassroots organizations and in the Parti Québécois, a social democratic party advocating for Quebec's independence. After accepting political jobs in ministerial offices, she was first elected as a member of the National Assembly in 1981. At age 32, she was appointed to the cabinet for the first time as a junior minister in the René Lévesque government.

After being defeated as a PQ candidate in La Peltrie in the 1985 general election and in a by-election in 1988, she was elected as the member for Taillon in the 1989 general election. With the return of the PQ in government in 1994, Premiers Parizeau, Bouchard and Landry appointed Marois to senior positions in the Quebec cabinet. She was instrumental in crafting policies to end confessional school boards in the public education system, she restructured the tuition system in post-secondary education, implemented Canada's first subsidized daycare program, and slashed the Quebec deficit under Premier Bouchard's "deficit zero" agenda. In 2001, Premier Landry appointed her Deputy Premier of Quebec, becoming the third woman after Lise Bacon and Monique Gagnon-Tremblay to assume the second-highest role in the provincial government.

After two failed leadership runs in 1985 and 2005, Marois briefly left political life in 2006. A year later, she ran unopposed to become the seventh leader of the Parti Québécois on June 26, 2007. From 2008 to 2012, she served as Leader of the Official Opposition of the National Assembly of Quebec. In spite of internal strife in 2011 and early 2012, where she survived several challenges to her leadership from prominent members of her caucus – earning her the nickname Dame de béton, "lady of concrete" – she led the Parti Québécois to victory with a minority government in the 2012 Quebec general election.