Queen
Sirikit
She took the oath
as regent before the National Assembly, as her husband, King
Bhumibol retired to do the traditional Buddhist studies.
She was born as Mom Rajawong Sikrit Kitiyakara of Chandaburi---as
a distant member of the royal family. Since 1956 she has
had the title Somdetch Pra Nang Chao Sirikit Phra Baromma Rajini
Nath (Queen Regent) and still acts as Deputy
Head of State.
She is the Minister to the
Prime Minister’ s Office of Thailand. She is also the president
of the Center for Asia-Pacific Women in Politics, the host of
this meeting. The Center for Asia-Pacific Women in Politics is
a Manila-based non-governmental organization established in 1992
by a number of women politicians and social workers on gender
issues. It aims to promote women in politics, transformative politics
in particular, which is the use of power to create change towards
economic, social and political equity between sexes and among
sectors within the context of shaping a society that is just,
humane and promotes a sustainable way of life.
Minister Khunying Supatra is a senior female politician who has been elected as Member of Parliament for seven times since 1979 in her hometown of Nakhon Si Thammarat Province in southern Thailand. During her first term in office as a Cabinet member, Khunying Supatra engineered the establishment of Thailand’s National Commission on Women’ s Affairs, an advisory board on policies concerning women affairs to the Prime Minister, chaired by a Deputy Prime Minister. Internationally, she served as an organizing member of the First Global Summit of Women in Dublin, Ireland, in 1991, and the second one in Taipei, Taiwan, in 1992. In 1995, at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, the People’ s Republic of China, KHUNYING SUPATRA was the Convenor of the NGO Forum that ran parallel to the United Nations Conference.
