United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

What did Margaret Thatcher do for women? Nothing. I faced her properly for the first time in the mid-1980s, although I had covered her progresses around the south of England for some years as a reporter for BBC South and subsequently for Newsnight. I had witnessed the baffling charisma of the woman and seen the power she had over an audience. Alan Clarke in his diaries compares her with Eva Perón – his assessment did not seem to me an exaggeration. She fizzed with an almost superhuman energy. She oozed that indefinable something that can only be described as star quality.

London (CNN) -- Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a towering figure in postwar British and world politics and the only woman to become British prime minister, has died at the age of 87.

She suffered a stroke Monday, her spokeswoman said.

Thatcher's funeral will be at St. Paul's Cathedral, with full military honors, followed by a private cremation, the British prime minister's office announced.

Interview with Ireland's first female President.

A new document has surfaced which shows British women, of all classes, voting in 1843, some 75 years before they received the parliamentary franchise in 1918. History professor, Sarah Richardson, explains what this discovery means and how it was possible.

(We invite our users to read the full article published March 18 2013)

It's a great time for women, isn't it? Last week events took place around the country for International Women's Day, families celebrated their loved ones on Mother's Day, and Women's History Month is currently rocking the US. Try not to think about that fact that when you say the word 'woman' in almost any region of the world, that word is political.

Could the next British prime minister be a woman? A surge of rumors in Parliament means it looks marginally more plausible this week than it did last week. Theresa May, the home secretary, has come under the spotlight for apparently harboring leadership ambitions, and supporters have described her as "Britain's answer to Angela Merkel,” the German chancellor.