Estonia Swears-In 1st Female President & PM Duo
Estonia has just become the only country in the contemporary world to currently be led by two female heads of government and state! Just after sunrise at 8:44AM on January 26th, 2021, Estonia swore in their elected female President Kersti Kaljulaid and elected Prime Minister Kaja Kallas to run their government and country.
The president has been serving in her seat since 2016 when the Estonian parliament elected her as the first woman to hold the office in the country. The prime minister has been the leader of the Reform Party and was nominated by the president to form a government after the previous Centre Party led government collapsed. The Estonian parliament confirmed the election of the prime minister and the nomination of her new cabinet on Monday, January 25th, resulting in an upcoming coalition of the Reform and Centre Parties.
The reason this is such a big deal is because the two women came into power after being elected in their country. The only other countries with all-women government leaders are New Zealand, Barbados, and Denmark, but they are all monarchies where the first two are both led by Queen Elizabeth II, the sovereign of the UK and Commonwealth, while the third is led by Queen Margrethe II. In the recent past, both Finland and Sri Lanka have had all-women government leaderships, the most recent being the reigns of Finnish President Tarja Halonen (2000-2012) and second female Finnish Prime Minister Mari Kiviniemi (2010-2011).
Kallas’s new coalition government has 59 Members of Parliament and was confirmed with 11 opposition votes in her favour, all of whom took an oath of office at yesterday morning’s ceremony. This government was originally expected to lead Estonia in 2019 but the Centre Party formed a coalition with the Estonia Conservative People’s Party and the Isamaa centre-right party – that coalition collapsed about two weeks ago due to a suspected corruption case.
The tenure of President Kaljulaid Estonia is coming to an end this year, but she has not yet announced her intentions for whether or not she will seek a second term. Stay tuned for more details on the government of Estonia with Media Quotient Inc!
Credit: Mattias Tammet/Office of the President of Estonia
