Belgian Female Leaders

Maggie De Block is a Belgian politician and physician best known for serving as the Minister of Health from 2014 to 2020. An influential politician, Maggie De Block also served as the Minister of Justice in 2014 and Minister of Asylum and Migration from 2018 to 2020.

Politician Sophie Wilmes scripted history when she became the first Belgian woman to become the country’s head of government, when she took over as Belgium’s prime minister. She has also been Belgium’s minister of budget. A powerful female icon, she made it to the Forbes list of Power Women in 2019.

The wife of US president James A. Garfield, Lucretia Garfield was a skilled public speaker and educator in her own right. However, she never publicly supported the women’s suffrage movement and almost always agreed with her husband’s political decisions. She attended to her husband when he was dying from a fatal gunshot wound.

Petra De Sutter is a Belgian politician and gynecologist who is currently serving as the Minister of Civil Service. Europe's first transgender minister, De Sutter worked as a professor at Ghent University before entering politics.   

Ludivine Dedonder is a Belgian politician and the current Minister of Defence. She has been serving her position since 2020 under the premiership of Alexander De Croo. Ludivine Dedonder is also known as the partner of fellow politician Paul-Olivier Delannois.

Annelies Verlinden is a Belgian politician who is currently serving as the Minister of the Interior in the De Croo Government headed by the Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo. Annelies Verlinden has been an important member of the Christian Democratic and Flemish party since the start of her political career.

Anne Malherbe Gosselin is a Belgian teacher and wife of Ecuadorian politician and economist Rafael Correa. While Correa served as the President of Ecuador from 2007 to 2017, Anne Malherbe Gosselin served as the First Lady of Ecuador. She currently lives in Belgium with her husband.

A member of the Flemish green party Groen, Turkish-Belgian politician Meyrem Almaci is also a Member of the Chamber of Representatives. She has previously been dragged into an antisemitic speech controversy, in which she accused Jews of being as torturous to Palestinians as the Nazis had been to Jews during the Holocaust.

Mahinur Ozdemir is a Belgian politician who became the first woman to wear hijab or headscarf in a Belgian parliamentary assembly. She did this on 7 June 2009 when she was elected as member of the Parliament of the Brussels-Capital Region. Mahinur Ozdemir is also actively involved with many NGOs in Schaerbeek.