Mary Eugenia Charles

Mary Eugenia Charles (Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire – DBE) was born on May 15, 1919 to Josephine and John B. Charles in the village of Pointe Michel in Saint Luke Parish of Dominica. She was a descendant of freed slaves and attended the only girls’ secondary school of the time in Dominica – the Catholic Convent School.

She later became the first female lawyer in Dominica, and the first female prime minister in Dominica; and the second female prime minister ever in the Caribbean, the first being Lucina da Costa of the Netherlands Antilles. She was Dominica’s prime minister for 15 years (1980-1995), becoming the third longest-serving female prime minister in the world – after Indira Gandhi of India and Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka.

Eugenia Charles’ interest in law was ignited when she worked as an assistant to Alastair Forbes at the colonial magistrate court following her secondary school education. She proceeded to the University of Toronto in Canada where she obtained her LL.B degree in 1947, and she later attended the London School of Economics in the UK where she was called to the bar at the Inner Temple, London, upon her graduation. She returned to Dominica to set up her own law practice, specializing in property law.

Given her stand against violations of press freedom in the 1960s, Charles became one of the founding members of the Dominica Freedom Party (DFP). She was also the party leader from the 1970s to 1995. In 1970, she became a parliamentarian under the DFP and in 1975 became the opposition leader of the party in the House of Parliament. She contested the 1980 general elections and won against Dominica Labour Party (DLP)’s Prime Minister Oliver Seraphin, emerging as the first female prime minister of Dominica.

Charles’s government faced two attempted coups in 1981: one from Frederick Newman, commander of the military, and the second from mercenaries hired by former Prime Minister Patrick John. Her administration succeeded the coups because they were thwarted with internal and external interventions. She, however, supported the United States invasion of Grenada under the administration of US President Ronald Reagan.

Charles served as prime minister for three terms in office and then retired from government in 1995. After her retirement, her DFP party lost the 1995 general elections to Edison James of the United Workers Party (UWP).

Eugenia Charles was awarded the Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth in 1991. She never had any children of her own and was never married. She was dubbed the “Iron Lady of the Caribbean” after UK’s Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher. She died on September 6, 2005.