Women Leaders of Africa, Asia, Middle East, and Pacific

About the Book

Women Leaders of Africa, Asia, Middle East, and Pacific presents biographical sketches of hundreds of women leaders from earliest recorded history down to the present time. It is the first of two volumes giving data on women leaders from every continent and island in the world; the second volume deals with Europe and countries of the Western Hemisphere. Each book is divided into two sections. Part I of this volume deals with African women leaders; Part II with Asian, Middle East and Pacific women. Within each section, which is introduced by an essay overview, entries are arranged alphabetically. Suggestions for further reading on the subject appear at the end of each entry. Not all entries are merely recitations of facts. Some women’s lives do not lend themselves to being reduced to statistics. Many were much too colorful, or lusty, or bloodthirsty to fit into a neat categorical description. How do you easily characterize the rule of the African queen who hacked her servant to death after she was through using him as a chair—just to intimidate her new Portuguese overlord? Who kept as many as thirty slaves as sexual partners, supposedly killing them off when she had finished with them? How do you gloss over the actions of the newly enthroned Persian queen who ordered her stepbrother strangled, then had gold and silver coins struck bearing her new title: “Purity of the earthly world and of the faith”? How do you describe nicely the actions of the Chinese queen who chopped off her own hand to make a point to a man she had just condemned to death? How do you ascribe feminine traits to a grandmother who tried to kill her own grandson to keep him from succeeding her on the throne she herself had stolen? On the other hand, how do you do justice to the Queen of Tonga without mention of her commanding size—six feet two inches—or her forty-seven-year devotion to matters far beyond mere governance but of more importance to her subjects: like establishing handicraft outlets to market the wares of her people? Or to the Queen of Thailand who acted as Regent while the King, a devout Buddhist, performed his meditations and duties as a monk? She directed much more than affairs of state; her concern for the common people led her to promote the export of hand-woven Thai silk and to establish a chain of shops selling native crafts. She also organized the Thai Red Cross for aid to refugees, orphans, wounded soldiers, and flood victims. These and dozens of stories like them make African, Asian, Middle East, and Pacific Women Leaders a unique treasure that is hard to put down. Although most of the entries in this volume deal with women rulers, a portion of the book is devoted to women in leadership roles other than those of queen, empress, prime minister, or chieftainess. Of these additional entries, the majority deals with contemporary women judges, secretaries of state, cabinet members, or legislators of unusual influence and power.

About the Author

Guida Jackson’s other fiction includes Passing Through, Death by Chicken, Hitting It Big, and Cybergasm. She has worked as a newspaper editor, magazine editor, book editor, lecturer in English (University of Houston), and Creative Writing (Montgomery College). She has a BA in Journalism, MA in the Humanities specializing in Latin American Literature, and PhD in Comparative Literature specializing in Third World Literature, particularly West African. She is founder of Touchstone Literary Journal (1976) and Panther Creek Press (1999), and author of 18 fiction and non-fiction books, published by Simon & Schuster, Oxford University Press, Barnes & Noble Books, and others. Three of her books, Women Who Ruled, Encyclopedia of Traditional Epics, and Women Rulers Throughout the Ages, have been on Library Journal’s Best Reference List. She lives with Jack, Hunter, and Lili Hume in Houston, Texas.