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.
Irish philanthropist
She is thought to be one of the first Nigerien women to pursue a career in the sciences and headed the mineralogy division of SOMAIR, the national mining company of Niger. She is the first wife of former President Mahamadou Issoufou (‘First Lady’ 2011-21) and has used her influence to improve access to health care in her country.
As the wife of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Stella Obasanjo was the First Lady of Nigeria from 1999 until her death in 2005.