TomorrowMakers

What do Katy Gallagher, Annely Akkermann, Elisabeth Svantesson and Rositsa Velkova-Zheleva have in common? They have been appointed as the finance minister of their respective countries within the last year. Apparently, Ms Nirmala Sitharaman is not the only lady at a country’s financial helm. There is a growing list of female finance ministers in the world, a post that has been held by a few famous women in the past as well. In the Indian subcontinent alone, Indira Gandhi, Benazir Bhutto and Chandrika Kumaratunga have managed the finance portfolio at one point in their career.

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Let us look at some of the women who are presently holding this coveted portfolio across the world,

1. Sri Mulyani – She is in the seventh year of her second term as the finance minister of Indonesia. She was named the finance minister of the year 2006 by Euromoney, a period during which she cracked down on corruption and initiated tax and customs reforms.
    
2. María Jesús Montero – The Spain FM presented the country’s biggest-ever budget in 2021. The year before she suspended all fiscal deficit targets in a bid to revive the pandemic-hit Spanish economy. Ms Montero has a degree in medicine and surgery and also an MBA.
    
3. Nirmala Sitharaman – Ms Sitharaman has also served as the country’s defence minister, the second woman to do so since Indira Gandhi.  During her reign, Ms Sitharaman has managed the pandemic-hit economy with stimulus packages and through the COVID-19 Economic Response Task Force. 
    
4. Chrystia Freeland – The Canadian FM is a former journalist with a 20-year career and a published author too. As an FM, she created a national childcare program in 2021. She was one of the earliest to call for sanctions on the Central Russian Bank, in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine war.
    
5. Janet Yellen – The United States Secretary of the Treasury was appointed by President Joe Biden in November 2020. During her tenure, she has addressed subjects like international tax reforms, the debt ceiling crisis, digital assets and digital dollar etc. She is the only person to lead the three most powerful bodies in the American government – the Treasury department, federal reserve and White House council of economic advisers.
    
6. Annika Saarikko – The Finnish FM held several portfolios before accepting the finance role, including family affairs and social services, and science and culture. She has also served as the deputy Prime Minister of Finland in September 2020. 
    
7. Sigrid Kaag – Dutch FM Sigrid Kaag has been a career diplomat, with a long stint with United Nations. She had resigned as a minister earlier in September 2021 due to the criticism faced over the evacuation of Dutch nationals from Afghanistan. Later she re-joined as the finance minister in the Fourth Rutte cabinet in 2022.

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There are several other female ministers across the globe right now. While it may not be possible to include all the female finance ministers, we have attempted to highlight the ones that are handling the more influential economies in the world. 

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