Previously published in Examiner
Part 10 of the Geraldine Ferraro series
This series of women in high ranking positions is a major series that will be broken down into several parts. Geraldine Ferraro is the beginning of the series, then we will go onto the Queens of England, the one and only Female British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, The Female Governor generals of Canada, and the one and only female Prime Minister of Canada, Right Honorable Kim Campbell. As you know Montrealers do not have a vice president nor president, our system is based on the British system has prime ministers.
Geraldine Ferraro weathered the storm and managed to publish her book, Ferraro: My Story, in 1985.
Geraldine Ferraro rose from her humble beginnings as the daughter of an immigrant, and a product of a single parent family home when her father died. She was educated in New York parochial schools and kept the dream of education and opportunities for all women alive. She worked hard all her life, maintaining honor status in school, while sometimes having to take on two jobs to support herself through university, then on to her professional career. She was a teacher, mother, wife, lawyer, district attorney, congresswoman, and dared to run for the vice president of the United States of America.
In all of that she never forgot the issues of poverty and being a woman in America.
The Aftermath
In 1989, she was president of the International Institute for Women’s Political Leadership
Geraldine remained active in fund raising campaigns, and took care of her sick mother in her later years before her mother died of emphysema in 1990.
In 1991, Geraldine again ran for a democrat senate position and again the innuendos about her finances surfaced. Ferraro maintained that none of this would be occurring if she was a man. Her Italian background seemed a good enough reason for her critics to connect both her and her husband to organized crime; without one shred of proof.
She lost the election by less than a percentage point
In 1993, Geraldine published Changing History: Women, Power and Politics
Also in 1993, President Clinton appointed her to the US delegation to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, in Vienna. She was then promoted to head the UN Commission on Human Rights Delegation, giving her the rank of US Ambassador.
Montreal’s McGill University is an ivy league University and Concordia University specializes in Women’s Issues.
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geraldine_Ferraro
