Telling the story of pioneering women in politics

Datshiane Navanayagam brings together two women from the US and Australia to discuss the art of writing a political biography and whether women in politics are placed under more scrutiny than men.

Helene Cooper is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and New York Times correspondent who fled Liberia with her family following the military coup of 1980. Her biography Madame President documents the life and political career of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf – the first democratically elected female head of state in Africa who served as president of Liberia from 2006 to 2018.

Dr Lekkie Hopkins is a feminist academic who lead the women’s studies programme at Edith Cowan University in Perth for 25 years. Utilising her skills as an archivist and oral historian, she pieced together the story of May Holman - a pioneering Australian politician who became the first female Labour politician to be elected to the Western Australian Parliament in 1925.

Produced by Hannah Dean

(Image: (L) Lekkie Hopkins, credit Robert van Koesveld. (R) Helene Cooper credit William B. Plowman/NBC via Getty Images.)