Vigdis Finnbogadottir is the fourth president of Iceland and the first female president in the world, ruling from 1980 to 1996. With a presidency of exactly sixteen years, she remains the longest-serving elected female head of state of any country to date and the only female president in Iceland’s history. Here is how she got to achieve one of the most important feats in the world.
Early Life and Education
Vigdis Finnbogadottir was born on 15 April 1930. Her father, Finnbogi Rútur Þorvaldsson, was a civil engineer, as well as a professor at the University of Iceland. Her mother, Sigríður Eiríksdóttir, was a nurse and the chairperson of the Icelandic Nurses Association.\
Vigdís studied French and French literature at the University of Grenoble and the Sorbonne in Paris from 1949 to 1953, then studied the history of theater at the University of Copenhagen. She then acquired a BA in French and English, as well as a Professional Graduate Certificate in Education, at the University of Iceland.
Prior to her entry into Icelandic Politics Vigdís participated in the 1960s and 1970s in numerous rallies held to protest against the U.S. military presence in Iceland. She married a physician in 1954 but divorced in 1963, and at the age of 41, she adopted a daughter, becoming the first single woman in Iceland to be allowed to adopt a child.
Career
After completing her education, Vigdis Finnbogadottir worked with the Reykjavík Theatre Company from 1954 to 1957 and again from 1961 to 1964. And also taught French at Menntaskólinn í Reykjavík 1962–67 and at Menntaskólinn við Hamrahlíð from 1967 to 1972. She also taught for a while at the University of Iceland, as well as holding French courses on the Icelandic state television.
She was the Artistic Director of the Reykjavík Theatre Company, later the Reykjavík City Theatre from 1972 to 1980. From 1976 to 1980, she was a member of the Advisory Committee on Cultural Affairs in the Nordic countries. In 1996, she became the founding chair of the Council of Women World Leaders at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Two years later she was appointed president of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology.
Political Career
Vigdis Finnbogadottir’s political career can be attributed to the women’s suffrage movement in Iceland. The women in order to attract great attention to their cause and show how important women’s undervalued work was, organized a general strike during the International Women’s Year in 1975. 90 percent of the Icelandic women went on the strike. At the presidential election in 1980, the women’s movement focused on electing a woman.
After much persuasion, from the movement, Vigdís accepted to contest the election running against three male candidates. She emerged victorious in the election, becoming the first woman in the world to be elected president in a democratic election. She won the simple plurality vote with 33.8% of the votes, ahead of Guðlaugur Thisorvaldsson (32.3%), Albert Guðmundsson (19.8%), and Pétur J. Thorsteinsson (14.1%).
Vigdís became very popular and was subsequently reelected three times, unopposed in 1984, with 94.6 percent of the votes against Sigrún Þorsteinsdóttir another woman in 1988, and unopposed in 1992. In 1996 she decided not to run for reelection. She was the longest-serving Icelandic president (with four terms) until Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson was elected to his fifth term in 2012. As earlier stated Vigdís Finnbogadóttir is the only woman to ever hold the post of President in the history of Iceland.
Presidency
Although the Icelandic presidency is largely a ceremonial position, Vigdis Finnbogadottir took an active role as an environmental activist and fought for the Icelandic language and culture, acting as a cultural ambassador in promoting the country. She emphasized the role of smaller states and hosted a crucial summit between U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1986.
Reportedly, she lived by a personal motto: “Never let the women down.” She has also been quoted as proclaiming: “If anything can save the world, women can.” Some have also argued that her presidency contributed to more pro-women and family-friendly legislation. Iceland has topped the World Economic Forum Gender Gap Index for 11 years straight.
Also Following her election as president in 1980, Iceland has elected only two other women to high office, both prime ministers. Sitting Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir (elected in 2017) and the first female Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir (elected in 2009). Since her presidential career ended, Finnbogadóttir has served as a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for world languages.
