Bangladeshi who held office as the Prime Minister of Bangladesh from 1991 to 1996 and then again from 2001 to 2006. She was the first woman in the country's history to be elected Prime Minister.
Her husband, the President of Bangladesh, was assassinated in a 1981 coup before she began her own political career.
When she took office in 1991, she became only the second woman in the Muslim world to head a democratic government as prime minister.
She and her late husband,
She became a widow when her husband, Ziaur Rahman , was assassinated in 1981.
