Dear Winners

Happy New Year, and for those of you in the UK, welcome back to a parliament with a record 220 women elected as MPs. Good news in part, but women are still only just over a third of MPs, so we have a way to go until the UK has equality in parliament. #WomenWhoWon wants to inspire more women to stand by increasing the visibility of those who came first.

In this update I'm introcuding you to Iceland's Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, the world's first democratically directly elected female president. Finnbogadóttir fought for the environment, national culture and equality for women and girls. She was divorced and was the first single person allowed to adopt a child in Iceland. She was re-elected three times and served for an extraordinary 16 years.

There's a cute advert for Icelandic water with this update that has great footage from when Finnbogadóttir won the Icelandic presidency in 1980. I don't think it has anything to do with the water. She was elected after women in Iceland went on strike to protest inequality. She was convinced to stand by those striking women and duly elected. More power to the Icelandic women rather than the water.

Thanks so much for supporting this book and please do recommend pledging to everyone you know would be interested. I'm always looking for corportate/organisations who would like to have a thank you or frontispiece in the book. Please do get in touch if you can connect me with anyone who wants to support women through their work.

Until next time, look out for more great women who won on my Instagram ros.ball

Ros