The first woman to serve in the U.S. Senate from North Carolina, Elizabeth Dole brought years of governmental experience to Capitol Hill as a former U.S. Secretary of Transportation and U.S. Secretary of Labor in two different presidential Cabinets.
Having worked alongside her husband as his legislative assistant for three decades, Catherine D. Norrell succeeded him as an Arkansas Representative in a special election after his death. Her experience as a congressional wife and aide helped to prepare her for new legislative responsibilities.
Charlotte Thompson Reid had already enjoyed a career as a nationally acclaimed singer before she began her second career relatively late in life as the widow and successor of a congressional candidate who died in mid-campaign.
Overcoming personal tragedy, Effiegene Locke Wingo succeeded her late husband in Congress to help her Arkansas constituents cope with an appalling national emergency. In the early days of the Great Depression, Wingo relied on her experience and connections as an active congressional wife to bring relief to her drought-stricken and impoverished Arkansas district.
The first woman U.S. Representative from South Carolina
In 1944 U.S. Congresswoman Emily Taft Douglas, a proponent of overseas humanitarian projects and a postwar United Nations Organization, defeated one of the most strident isolationists in the House of Representatives, heralding, as some observers believed, the triumph of American internationalism.
Jean Carnahan, the former first lady of Missouri, was appointed to the United States Senate to fill the vacant seat from Missouri caused by the death of her husband.
Jocelyn Burdick was appointed to a brief three-month U.S Congressional term to fill the vacancy caused by the death of her husband, a longtime North Dakota Senator and Representative.
Maryland’s first woman Member in Congress, Katharine Edgar Byron, came to the U.S. House after winning a special election to succeed her husband who died in a plane crash.
Tuanku Zara Salim is married to the reigning Sultan of Perak in Malaysia. Before her marriage to the Sultan she was heading an oil and gas consultancy firm based in Kuala Lumpur.