Iveta Radičová

Iveta Radičová (Karafiátová; born 7 December 1956) is a Slovak politician who served as prime minister of Slovakia from 2010 to 2012.

She was the first woman to hold the position.

Radičová led a coalition government as a member of the SDKÚ-DS.

As prime minister, she was responsible for managing the economy after the Great Recession, and she supported budget cuts to reduce the government deficit.

For the final months of her tenure, she also served as Minister of Defence.

Iveta Karafiátová was born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, on 7 December 1956.

She has said that her father was strict, while she compared her mother to an angel, though she has also said that her mother was quick-tempered.

She has attributed her own temper to her mother, saying that it was inherited.

Karafiátová grew up in poverty, which she attributed to the country's communist governance.

She practiced dance throughout her childhood, quitting when she was sixteen.

She was not permitted to graduate from secondary school, as she and her class had decided to reject the required socialist theme of their class project.

Despite this, she was still accepted into university.

Karafiátová attended Comenius University from 1975 to 1979, where she studied sociology.

She took up the subject on the advice of Tón Hirner, a family friend and the brother of sociologist Alexander Hirner.

Her intention was to pursue a sociology and mathematics hybrid degree, but the program was canceled because she was the only applicant.

When she began attending the school, she met Stano Radič.

They married in 1979, and they had a daughter, Eva, in 1980.

After obtaining her bachelor's degree, Iveta Radičová attended the Slovak Academy of Sciences, where she earned her PhD in the same subject.

Radičová began working as the head of the Slovak Academy of Sciences' family research team in 1979, where she studied how communist states such as Slovakia could implement family policy.

Unlike most academics in her field, she did not join the Communist Party of Slovakia or study Marxism–Leninism.

Instead, she specialized in methodology, a field which demanded less ideological adherence.

Even then, she was relatively open about her anti-communist beliefs.

As the Velvet Revolution was beginning in 1989, Radičová involved herself with the Public Against Violence movement, becoming its spokeswoman.

In this capacity, she was one of the few women was prominently involved with the Velvet Revolution.

The same year, Radičová left the Slovak Academy of Sciences and spent the following year at the University of Oxford working with Ralf Dahrendorf.

During the 1990s, she oppose the dissolution of Czechoslovakia and the rule of Vladimír Mečiar.

Radičová returned to Slovakia in 1990, where she began teaching sociology and political science at Comenius University.

She founded the Center for Social Policy Analysis in 1992.

She also founded the Center for Social Policy Analysis, where she served as the director from 1992 to 2005.

She came to specialize in the study of gender issues, both at Comenius and at the Center for Social Policy Analysis.

Her husband Stano Radič died in 2005.

The same year, she was appointed Minister of Labor, Social Affairs, and Family.

Radičová was elected a member of parliament in 2006, and she was the runner up in the 2009 presidential election.

Prior to her tenure as prime minister, she was a member of parliament, the Minister of Labor, Social Affairs, and Family, and an unsuccessful presidential candidate in the 2009 presidential election.

Born in communist Czechoslovakia, Radičová began an academic career as a sociologist and specialized in methodology so she did not have to participate in ideological projects.

She was one of the few women to take a prominent role in the Velvet Revolution, serving as a spokeswoman for Public Against Violence.

She was forced to resign from parliament in 2010 when she cast a vote on behalf of a colleague, but she returned to parliament later that year as the leader of her party.

Radičová's party formed a coalition, making her prime minister.

Her coalition collapsed in 2011 when she tied the European Financial Stability Facility to confidence in her government.

After stepping down, Radičová returned to academia.