Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto was the first woman to lead a democratic government in a Muslim-majority nation. She served as Prime Minister of Pakistan from 1988 to 1990 and from 1993 to 1996 with a liberal, secularist ideology. She chaired and co-chaired the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) from the early 1980s until her assassination in 2007.

Bhutto was born in 1953 to a wealthy and prominent political family. Her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was the leader of Pakistan from 1971 until 1977 and founded the PPP, and her mother was Begum Nusrat Bhutto, who came from a wealthy merchant family. Bhutto idolized her father and he, against social conventions, encouraged her educational development.

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Bhutto attended Radcliffe College, Harvard University for her undergraduate degree, then studied Philosophy, Political Science, and Economics (PPE) at the University of Oxford before completing a postgraduate degree in International Law.

Bhutto’s father was executed in 1979 after a military coup and she assumed the position of leader of the PPP. She and her mother endured frequent periods of house arrest from 1979 to 1984, and Bhutto was exiled from 1984 to 1986. Upon her return, Bhutto’s PPP campaigned for open elections and won the single largest bloc of seats in the National Assembly.

Bhutto became the country’s first female Prime Minister on December 1, 1988. She worked to improve human rights and the position of women in Pakistani society. Freedom of the press was restored and labor unions and student groups met openly once again. However, burdened with an antagonistic relationship with the military leadership, she was defeated in 1990 and found herself in court on charges of misconduct. Her re-election in 1993 made way for improvements in Pakistan’s relations abroad and foreign investment in the country. However, in 1996 she was dismissed after facing allegations of corruption related to the assassination of her brother.

Exiled once more, Bhutto remained absent from Pakistan until 2007 when she was granted amnesty for all of her corruption convictions. As she was leaving an election rally, a gunman shot her three times and explosives went off around her vehicle. She died at the age of 54 with many people believing there was a cover-up by the Pakistani government.