Time’s “Person of the Year” Is a Woman for the First Time in 29 Years
Time’s “Person of the Year” Is a Woman for the First Time in 29 Years
Today, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was named Time’s 2015 Person of the Year for her leadership on the Syrian refugee and Greek debt crises. Merkel becomes just the fourth woman to win the honor—outside of a group of winners—since it was first presented in 1927. She is also the first individual woman to win since 1986, and the first individual woman to receive the award since Time changed its title from “Man of the Year” in 1999.
In announcing the magazine’s decision, Time managing editor Nancy Gibbs said, “For asking more of her country than most politicians would dare, for standing firm against tyranny as well as expedience and for providing steadfast moral leadership in a world where it is in short supply, Angela Merkel is ‘Time’s Person of the Year.’”
Earlier this year, Merkel helped shape Europe’s response to Greece’s continuing debt crisis, insisting on strict austerity measures before any bailouts went ahead.
With the Syrian conflict forcing millions of refugees away from home, Merkel opened Germany’s doors, committing to accept 800,000 asylum seekers this year. It is expected that the number will approach 1 million by year’s end.
“She has stepped up in a way that was uncharacteristic even for her,” Gibbs continued. “She’s been a very long-serving leader, the longest-serving in the west. She controls the world’s fourth largest economy, but this year she really was tested in how she would respond to some of the most difficult challenges that any leader is facing in the world.”
. . . .
http://msmagazine.com/blog/2015/12/09/times-person-of-the-year-is-a-woman-for-the-first-time-in-29-years/
= new reply since forum marked as read
And can't believe they've only given it to four individual women....one of whom was famous for screwing a former King!!!
The cover of TIME’s year-end issue of 1986 shows a confident woman in a red jacket, her gaze steady, her chin resting on her hand. It is Corazon Aquino, the first woman President of the Philippines, a political outsider who upended a dictator by, as Pico Iyer wrote in his cover story, “leading a democratic revolution that captured the world’s imagination.” If you look up the table of contents of that issue in the Time archive, you’ll find a line that reads “Woman of the Year.” Immediately following is a parenthetical: (Man of the Year).
“Woman of the Year (Man of the Year)” — that’s how they did it back then. Like Wallis Simpson and Queen Elizabeth before her, Corazon Aquino was a woman in a man’s franchise. In 1999, TIME changed the title to Person of the Year. But not since President Aquino has the Person of the Year been an individual woman. Not, at least, until 2015.
Why the long wait? As I wrote a few years ago, the label of Person of the Year tends to favor people with institutional power. The choice reflects TIME’s view of who affected the news and our lives, for good or for ill. Since 1986 there’ve been four U.S. Presidents in the mix — three of them two-termers, all of them men. Plus a handful of leaders of the Soviet Union (and Russia), also all men. The Pope keeps being a man. And it’s a lot easier to make news from an address like the White House, the Kremlin or the Vatican....
http://time.com/4141766/time-person-of-the-year-angela-merkel-women/?xid=tcoshare
?quality=75&strip=color&w=395
?quality=75&strip=color&w=408
?quality=75&strip=color&w=421
?quality=75&strip=color&w=419