Prunskienė is also a member of the Council of Women World Leaders, an international network of current and former women presidents and prime ministers whose mission is to mobilize the highest-level women leaders globally for collective action on issues of critical importance to women and equitable development.
Early life and education
Prunskienė was born as Kazimira Danutė Stankevičiūtė in the village of Vasiuliškė, Ostland (now Lithuania). Her father, Pranas Stankevičius, worked as a forest ranger and owned several hectares of land.[1] Known as a jolly musician who played many instruments at country weddings, including the guitar, fiddle, concertina, and a pipe of his own making, Stankevičius was killed by the NKVD in the Labanoras Forest when Kazimira was one year old.
Prunskienė attended Vilnius University, earning her degree in economics in 1965 and later earned her doctorate from the same university in the same subject during the late 1980s. Afterwards, she stayed on at the university first as an instructor, then as a senior associate in the Department of Industrial Economics.[2]
Before getting her first degree, Prunskienė married Povilas Prunskus. Between 1963 and 1971 she bore three children — a son named Vaidotas and two daughters called Rasa and Daivita. She would later divorce her first husband and remarry in 1989 to Algimantas Tarvidas.[3]
Political career
Prunskienė shifted slowly from university to government circles. Joining the Lithuanian Communist Party in 1980, by 1986 she began acting as the deputy director for the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic's Agricultural Economics Research Institute.[4] In 1988 Prunskienė helped found the grass-roots Lithuanian restructuring movement Sąjūdis, which eventually grew into Lithuania's leading pro-independence group.[5] In late 1980s Prunskienė became Deputy Chairwoman of Council of Ministers of Lithuanian SSR.
She was elected to the position of the Prime Minister of the first government on 17 March by the Supreme Council of Lithuania. By this, she became the first woman to become Prime Minister of Lithuania and first Prime Minister after 11 March 1990. She immediately faced the problems brought on by an economic embargo set in place by Mikhail Gorbachev in an attempt to force Lithuania back under control of the crumbling USSR. Prunskienė flew to countries all over the world, including the United States, to try to gain support for negotiations with Gorbachev about the embargo through such committees as the Helsinki Commission.[6] After nine months in office, Prunskienė resigned and later headed the Department of Agriculture in Lithuania.
At the Vital Voices Conferences, held on 10 July 1997 in Vienna, Austria, Prunskienė published The Role Of Women In Democracy: The Experience Of Lithuania. Here she addresses women's vastly unequal pay in comparison to men, the conservative tradition of a Catholic country, and the general status of women and their level of political influence in Lithuania.[9]
Smith, David. The Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Routledge. 2002
Opfell, Olga. Women Prime Ministers and Presidents. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Co., 1993.
"Hearing before the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe: Meeting with Prime Minister Kazimiera Prunskiene of Lithuania." Implementation of the Helsinki Accords. One Hundred First Congress Second Session. 1990.
Prunskienė, Kazimira. "The Role Of Women In Democracy: The Experience Of Lithuania." 10 July 1997
Torild Skard (2014) 'Kazimiera Prunskiene' "Women of power - half a century of female presidents and prime ministers worldwide", Bristol: Policy Press ISBN978-1-4473-1578-0
