Female foreign ministers: Role models for Germany's Annalena Baerbock?

It is now official. One-time contender for the chancellory Annalena Baerbock has been appointed foreign minister by the German president. The Green party co-leader Baerbock becomes the first woman in this post, and also the youngest-ever holder of the post. She wants to shape a values-based and feminist foreign policy, she says.

It's been over 20 years since the United States appointed its first female Secretary of State. Madeleine Albright, who served under President Bill Clinton, was key in negotiating the peace deal between Serbia and the Kosovar Albanians in 1999 in Paris. Her German counterpart at the time was Green party politician Joschka Fischer (l).

For decades, many African countries have had female foreign office chiefs. In Ghana, Shirley Ayorkor Botchway is currently in charge of diplomatic affairs — here she is seen on a visit to Istanbul in January 2020. The first female foreign minister of the West African country held the position back in 1979.

Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah has been Namibia's foreign minister for almost ten years. During the apartheid era, she worked in the Soviet Union, then in the UK. After her country's independence from South Africa, she first became a member of parliament, then a minister and since 2012 she has been foreign minister. Here, Nandi-Ndaitwah receives Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Windhoek.

Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl danced with Lavrov's boss, Vladimir Putin, at her wedding reception in August 2018. Kneissl, who has no party affiliation and was nominated by the right-wing populist Freedom Party, has been repeatedly criticized for her closeness to the Russian president. After leaving office in 2019, she now sits on the supervisory board of the Russian oil company Rosneft.

Oil is often the topic under discussion when Najla al-Mangusch receives state guests. The 48-year-old lawyer is foreign minister of Libya — one of the world's most important oil-producing countries. But it is partly thanks to oil that the country has experienced a bloody civil war. Here, al-Mangush receives Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.

Nanaia Mahuta has been New Zealand's Foreign Minister since November 2021, after having served as Minister for Maori Development. Women of Maori descent and mixed ancestry now have career opportunities that were long closed to them, Mahuta said. The post is a "huge privilege," she said. The 50-year-old is the first woman in New Zealand's parliament to have a traditional chin tattoo.

She was considered a contender for the post of head of government: the charismatic Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh. But on September 10, 2003, an assassin stabbed Lindh in a Stockholm department store, bringing her life to an abrupt end. Today, a foundation in Anna Lindh's name promotes dialogue between the EU and the other countries bordering the Mediterranean.

Even before the founding of the state of Israel, Golda Meir had negotiated with the Jordanian king to prevent an Arab-Israeli war — unsuccessfully. In 1956, she became foreign minister of the still-new country, and in 1969 she took the role of prime minister. Will Annalena Baerbock, who so recently wanted the German chancellorship, have a similar career trajectory?