All About Women | Women

The Dubai Quality Group yesterday launched the seventh Emirates Businesswomen's Award under the new name of Emirates Women's Award during a press conference at the Raffles Hotel.

The award, launched in 2003, is held annually under the patronage of Shaikh Ahmad Bin Saeed Al Maktoum, President of the Dubai Civil Aviation Authority, Chairman and chief executive of Emirates Airline and Group and honorary patron of the Dubai Quality Group.

The award is meant to honour outstanding business and professional women in the UAE and to encourage women to achieve their full potential and maximise their contribution to the country's economic growth.

"I truly believe that the level of development and great achievements made by women in the UAE in different fields over the past years must be praised and appreciated," said Osama Al Rahma, Vice-Chairman of DQG, in his speech.

Award Criteria
Participation is open to both nationals and expatriate women in two main categories: business owners and professionals.

For business owners, the applicant should have established and run a private business in the UAE for not less than three years.

For professionals, the applicant must be working in a professional sector in the UAE for a minimum of three years.

Winners will be selected according to their leadership skills, future goals, financial performance, level of professionalism and innovation. The deadline for applications is April 15, 2010.

CIA Director Leon Panetta is taking steps to increase the number of women at the highest levels of the nation's most fabled spy agency.

Today, Panetta announced that Stephanie O'Sullivan, formerly the head of the Science and Technology Directorate, has been promoted to the position of Associate Deputy Director --effectively, the agency's third in command. She replaces Scott White, a long-time CIA manager who has decided to retire. Earlier this year, Panetta promoted Sue Bromley to Chief Financial Officer.

The position of Associate Deputy Director replaced the position of "executive director," which has been held by a woman before: Nora Slatkin, who served in the Clinton administration. During the Bush administration, Jami Miscik held the position of Deputy Director, Intelligence. Human intelligence remains a male-dominated enterprise, though the CIA has strenuously increased the number of women it recruits, particularly for the directorate of operations. At the Office of the Director for National Intelligence, one of the six top positions is held by a woman: Dawn Meyerriecks, the deputy DNI for acquisition and technology. Both the DNI's CIO and CFO are women; Priscilla Guthrie was brought to the CIO's job by Blair and Marilyn Vacca was promoted internally.

The U.S. is behind the curve when it comes to promoting women to the top ranks of intelligence services. Britain's Security Service, MI-5, bears the distinction of having fielded the first woman director, Stella Rimmington.

MARY MacKILLOP: The Roman Catholic Church recognised her as a saint after the Vatican accepted that two medical miracles in the 1990s were attributable to her. Born in Melbourne in 1842, she dedicated her life to social work and educating the poor. She was once excommunicated for insubordination.

ANNA BLIGH: Labor's successor to Peter Beattie had something to thank for the Bjelke-Petersen years. She was first drawn to politics as a uni student watching police clobber right-to-march demonstrators. "I grew up in a time when people regarded Queensland as backward," she said. "Who would have thought we would be the first state in Australia to elect a female premier?"

KRISTINA KENEALLY: The first female premier in NSW also became part of the first all-female leadership team in Australian political history, with CARMEL TEBBUTT remaining as deputy premier. But she was installed by the party power brokers, not the voters, and has inherited a government in serious if not terminal decline. Defeated premier Nathan Rees said whoever replaced him would be a "puppet" of the back-room power brokers.

ELIZABETH BLACKBURN: Deserves more fame than she is likely to get in an age of short attention spans and reality TV, though her work may help unravel the mysteries of ageing and cancer. She is examining how genes remain intact through repeated cell division, thanks to things called telomeres. They're the end caps on DNA which prevent fraying, as she says, a bit like plastic tips on shoelaces.

JULIE GOODWIN: NSW mother of four Julie Goodwin became Australia's first MasterChef. Everyone fond of eating - that's most of us - should hope she achieves her ambition to serve good, unpretentious food in a cosy little restaurant. "I just want it to be a warm and welcoming place that people love to be in," she said. "And when they leave, I want them to feel like they've been loved."

JUDY MORAN: The woman whose husband and two sons were murdered in Melbourne's gangland wars was herself charged with murdering her brother-in-law, Desmond "Tuppence" Moran.

They were one of the world's most famous couples, who lived lives of power and glory – but who spent their last hours in despair and confusion. Now, more than 2,000 years since Antony and Cleopatra walked the earth, historians believe they may finally have solved the riddle of their last hours together.

A team of Greek marine archaeologists who have spent years conducting underwater excavations off the coast of Alexandria in Egypt have unearthed a giant granite threshold to a door that they believe was once the entrance to a magnificent mausoleum that Cleopatra VII, queen of the Egyptians, had built for herself shortly before her death.

They believe the 15-tonne antiquity would have held a seven metre-high door so heavy that it would have prevented the queen from consoling her Roman lover before he died, reputedly in 30BC.

The threshold, part of the sunken palace complex in which Cleopatra is believed to have died, was discovered recently at a depth of eight metres but only revealed this week. It has yet to be brought to the surface.