Tsola Nincheva Dragoycheva, also known under the pseudonym Sonya, was a Bulgarian politician of the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP). A member of the illegal armed wing of the party in the 1920s, she spent years in prison and as an émigré in the Soviet Union. After World War II, she held a number of high posts and was part of the nomenklatura. From 1946 until 1990, she was continuously a member of the National Assembly of Bulgaria. On 11 December 1947 she became the first female member of a cabinet in the history of the country.
Tsola Dragoycheva as a young woman
Image: Tsola Dragoycheva
Women's International Democratic Federation
The Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF) is an international women's rights organization. Established in 1945, it was most active during the Cold War when, according to historian Francisca de Haan, it was "the largest and probably most influential international women's organization of the post-1945 era". Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, its headquarters were moved from Berlin to Paris. In 2002, with the election of Márcia Campos as president, the office relocated to Brasília. Subsequently, in 2007 the WIDF secretariat was located in São Paulo. Since 2016, the president has been Lorena Peña of El Salvador. The WIDF's magazine, Women of the Whole World, was published in six languages: Arabic, English, French, German, Russian, and Spanish.
Original WIDF logo from its founding
Eugénie Cotton, 1952
Cover of Femmes Francaises showing Cotton receiving the Stalin prize for peace from Nina Popova.
Hertta Kuusinen, 1958