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Sunday 13 October 2013

Cabinet (Politics)

The name cabinet derives from the 17th century, when monarchs wished to rule through a smaller body than the privy council. The chosen group of ministers met with the king in a more intimate room (a cabinet) and so became known as the cabinet council. Gradually this select body grew in power, especially after the Hanoverian kings gave up attending its meetings, a change which in the long term increased cabinet independence.

Francis Bacon was the first to refer to a body of secret advisers as a Cabinet council in 1605. The word cabinet was used to signify a small cabin or small room where they met in private.

George Washington convened the first U.S. Cabinet meeting in 1793 - at his home.

Calvin Coolidge was the first Vice President to attend Cabinet meetings on a regular basis, at the invitation of President Warren G. Harding. Prior to Coolidge, all Vice Presidents had been excluded from Cabinet meetings.

Royal Cabinets in England date back to the 17th century. Parliamentary cabinets arrived in 1916 with David Lloyd George’s War Cabinet, which was formed during the First World War.

On June 8, 1929 Mrs Margaret Bondfield became Britain’s first woman cabinet minister when she was appointed Minister of Labour in Ramsay Macdonald’s Labour government. Bondfield was a prominent figure in the women's suffrage movement and the British labor movement. Her appointment as Minister of Labour was a significant milestone for gender equality and women's political representation in the United Kingdom. 

Bondfield's tenure as Minister of Labour lasted until 1931, and she played a crucial role in implementing social welfare reforms and advocating for workers' rights during her time in office. 

Margaret Bondfield

Frances Perkins became in 1933 the first woman appointed to hold a U.S. Cabinet post as Secretary of Labor.

Robert Weaver became the first African American in US Presidential Cabinet when Lyndon Baines Johnson appointed him as the first United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

Madeleine Albright was sworn in as the first female United States Secretary of State on January 23, 1997, becoming the highest-ranking woman in the history of the U.S. government at that time.

Madeleine Albright at World Economic Forum. By World Economic Forum .

The US President's Cabinet is composed of: the Attorney General, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Treasury, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Interior, the Secretary of Commerce, the Secretary of Health/Human Services, the Secretary of Housing/Urban Development, the Secretary of Labor, the Secretary of Transportation, the Secretary of Energy, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Secretary of Education.

Sources Daily ExpressHistory World 

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