page_title: Dilma Rousseff
section_title: International recognition
hierarchical_section_title: Dilma Rousseff / Presidency (2011–2016) / International recognition
caption_attribution_description: English: The President of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, is awarded the Woodrow Wilson Award in New York City. September 21, 2011.
context_page_description: Dilma Vana Rousseff is a Brazilian economist and politician who served as the 36th president of Brazil, holding the position from 2011 until her impeachment and removal from office on 31 August 2016. She was the first woman to hold the Brazilian presidency and had previously served as Chief of Staff to former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from 2005 to 2010.
  The daughter of a Bulgarian immigrant, Rousseff was raised in an upper middle class household in Belo Horizonte. She became a socialist in her youth and after the 1964 coup d'état joined left-wing and Marxist urban guerrilla groups that fought against the military dictatorship. Rousseff was captured, tortured, and jailed from 1970 to 1972.
  After her release, Rousseff rebuilt her life in Porto Alegre with Carlos Araújo, who was her husband for 30 years. They both helped to found the Democratic Labour Party in Rio Grande do Sul, and participated in several of the party's electoral campaigns. She became the treasury secretary of Porto Alegre under Alceu Collares, and later Secretary of Energy of Rio Grande do Sul under both Collares and Olívio Dutra.
context_section_description: Rousseff was ranked fourth in Forbes' 2014 list of the most powerful women in the world, and the second most powerful in 2013. In 2015 she was the 7th, and in 2016 she was no longer in the list.
  In August 2011, Rousseff was included in the Forbes' list of the most powerful women in the world, at the 3rd position, behind Merkel and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In October 2010, she was included in the Forbes' list of the most powerful people in the world, at the 16th position. She was the third highest placed woman on the list, after Angela Merkel and Sonia Gandhi, President of the Indian National Congress.
  On 20 September, she received a Woodrow Wilson Public Service Award at the Pierre Hotel in New York City, a distinction which was also given to her predecessor in 2009. On the following day, she became the first woman to open a session of the United Nations General Assembly. Rousseff was featured on the cover of Newsweek magazine on 26 September 2011.
caption: President Rousseff is awarded the Woodrow Wilson Award in New York City, 21 September 2011.
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