Dilma Rousseff, 62, won the recent election in Brazil with 56% of the votes. She will be officially in office 1. January. As mentioned in the title, she is the first woman to be elected president in Brazil.

Rousseff has quite an interesting history. In the early 70s, she sat in prison for participating in armed leftist-revolt against the then ruling military government. She sat in prison for three years, while having to deal with torture.

The elections haven’t been easy for her. She was nicknamed “The Witch” by her opponents and has become quite hated by large amount of the population. For some reasons, when it comes to women in politics, women get often called sexist names. The Finnish president, Tarja Halonen for instance, has been called “Moomimamma”. Her looks and dressing style have also been heavily attacked, which has not been the case with Finland’s other, male presidents. In the U. S, both democrats Hillary Clinton as well as republicans Meg Whitman have been called sexist names like “Bitch” and “Whore”. It is unfortunate to see that when dealing with women in politics, many people (both men and women) feel threatened by powerful women. And react to this fear in childish manner.
But despite the difficulties, Rousseff has gone victoriously forward and will soon be one of the most powerful women in the world. Being president of Brazil, she has a lot of difficult, desperate social and political issues to handle.

Rousseff belongs to a leftist party, The Worker’s Party, and has promised to continue the same political line as the lands former president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. She opposes the death penalty, but unfortunately is a little pro-life and only supports abortion in extreme causes (which, however, is still better than other powerful women politicians, like Costa Ricas president Laura Chinchilla, who’s also against the morning after pill).

Update: My spelling of Rousseff’s name was a transliteration from Swedish. She spells her own name Dilma Rousseff on her site. Visit her site here.