It is almost the end of a year, and a good time to reflect on the achievements of the past year.
I have just read a very interesting article in FT Magazine which is a great celebration of the extraordinary women who have made their mark — as leaders, campaigners and fighters — in 2014.
Here we go, the list of the most remarkable women in a year that has shaken the world:
- Marina Silva, presidential candidate, Brazil, born into a poor, mixed-race Amazon family, she is on the verge of a stunning election win after taking over her party.
- Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, she is the fifth and current First Minister of Scotland and the Leader of the Scottish National Party. She is the first woman to hold either position.
- Laura Poitras, the journalist who exposed the NSA, she won the 2013 George Polk Award for “national security reporting” related to the NSA disclosures. The NSA reporting by Poitras contributed to the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.
- Li Na, tennis star, The Grand Slam winner is one of China’s great sporting heroes. Now retiring, she is determined to coach the next generation to victory.
- Naomi Klein, climate change activist, she is the author of This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate.
- Dr Joanne Liu, Ebola campaigner, she is the current International President of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
- #BringBackOurGirls: Hadiza Bala Usman, how one woman’s bid to help free the schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram in Nigeria turned into a global social media campaign.
- Arundhati Bhattacharya, head of State Bank of India, she is the first woman to be the Chairperson of State Bank of India. In 2014, she was listed as the 36th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes.
- Fighters: The women of the YPJ, the Syrian Kurdish Women’s Protection Units, the YPJ has become a cause célèbre: the image of bronzed women toting guns is a rare symbol of female empowerment in a conservative region.
- Tech stars: The women of Alibaba, a third of founding partners and nine out of 30 managers are female at the Chinese ecommerce group, the world’s second-largest internet company.
