The Press and Journal (Inverness, Highlands, and Islands)
Olena and Billie in top 100 women list
Singer Billie Eilish and Ukraine’s first lady Olena Zelenska both feature on a list celebrating inspirational and influential people from around the world.
The theme of this year’s BBC 100 Women annual list, which began in 2013, focuses on progress as it again honours activists, politicians, entertainment figures and health care workers.
US megastar Eilish is the first singer born in the 21st Century to get a number one in the charts and an Oscar.
The 20-year-old topped the Billboard 100 with her electropop hit Bad Guy in 2019 and the US album charts with When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? in 2019 and Happier Than Ever in 2021.
Her performance of No Time To Die for the James Bond film of the same name won the Academy Award for best original song this year and topped the UK’s Official Charts in 2020.
Eilish is also known for her activism which includes her speaking out on issues like the environment and women’s equality.
At Glastonbury in June she called the Supreme Court case that decided to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade case legalising abortion nationwide a “really dark day for women in the US”.
Eilish and her brother Finneas O’Connell also joined WaterAid’s call for climate action as she became the festival’s youngest solo headliner.
This month, she headlined at the Earthshot Prize, an environmental awards ceremony for people finding solutions to climate change.
Other entertainment figures on the list include Indian actress and producer Priyanka Chopra, actress and disability activist Selma Blair and Puerto Rican West Side
Story actress Rita Moreno. From the world of politics, the first female president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, the first female prime minister of Barbados Mia Mottley and First Lady Zelenska, are named.
The wife of president Volodymyr Zelensky made a trip in November to the UK to focus on the use of alleged sexual violence and rape by Russian forces in the months-long war, which is now heading into a long winter.
She told MPs the youngest known victim of the “thousands” of such crimes was a four-year-old girl.
The 44-year-old has also called on the UK to lead efforts to set up a criminal tribunal to prosecute senior Russians over the invasion, similar to the post-war Nuremberg trials of leading Nazis.
Director-general of the BBC Tim Davie called all the women on the list “remarkable” for “what they have achieved and contributed to their communities and society”.
The list in previous years has included education activist and Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai, actress and activist Jane Fonda, environmental campaigner Greta Thunberg and actress Rebel Wilson.
For the first time, the BBC asked some of the previous 100 Women to nominate women they feel deserve a place.
Wilson put South Korean film producer and cultural leader Miky Lee and Yousafzai nominated Alice Pataxo, a climate campaigner from Brazil.
The director of BBC World Service, Liliane Landor, said: “They, like all the women before them, have contributed to our world in incredible ways, and we celebrate this.
“This is about increasing visibility and giving recognition where it’s due.”