Showing results for "K" in Women in Politics

Mazie Hirono is one of the most fiercely outspoken Democrats in Congress, but her journey to the U.S. Senate was far from likely. Raised on a rice farm in rural Japan, she was seven years old when her mother, Laura, left her abusive husband and sailed with her two elder children to Hawaii, crossing the Pacific in steerage in search of a better life. Though the girl then known as "Keiko" did not speak or read English when she entered first grade, she would go on to serve as a state representative and as Hawaii's lieutenant governor before winning election to Congress in 2006.

With gripping anecdotes, Levinson describes her adventures working in some of the most dangerous places on earth, from Somalia to Iraq. But it is her efforts on behalf of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf that form the heart of Choosing the Hero. Levinson chronicles her behind-the-scenes lobbying for the exiled Sirleaf in Washington, DC, as well as her on-the-ground work in Liberia. It took three tries for Sirleaf to finally win the presidency in 2005. President Sirleaf won the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize.

In She Is Me, veteran journalist Lori Sokol, PhD, introduces listeners to 35 women hailing from all walks of life who have successfully utilized qualities like compassion, empathy, introspection, and solidarity to create change and transform lives.

The idea for this book first arose out of a graduate seminar I was in as a master's student at Georgetown University. In this essay, I describe the reasons I believe that South Korea has such a low birth rate, and why the country is set up in a way that often actively disincentivizes women to participate in the workforce.