President Reagan appointed Jeane Kirkpatrick as U.S. Ambassador to the UN, making her the first woman to hold this position and a cabinet-level post.
On February 4, 1981, newly inaugurated President Ronald Reagan appointed political scientist Jeane J. Kirkpatrick as the United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations, elevating her to a cabinet-level position in his administration. This appointment made her the first woman ever to serve as chief U.S. representative at the UN, a milestone in American diplomatic history.
Kirkpatrick had come to Reagan's attention through her influential 1979 essay in Commentary magazine, "Dictatorships and Double Standards," which argued that the United States should distinguish between authoritarian regimes that might reform and totalitarian communist regimes that could not, and should support the former as bulwarks against Soviet expansion. This thesis, later dubbed the "Kirkpatrick Doctrine," shaped Reagan's foreign policy approach toward allies such as those in Latin America and elsewhere.
As UN Ambassador, Kirkpatrick became known for her forceful, uncompromising defense of American interests and her willingness to challenge the UN's often anti-American majority coalitions. She served during a pivotal period of Cold War tension, including the Falklands War, the Soviet shootdown of KAL Flight 007, and the U.S. invasion of Grenada. Her tenure broke a significant gender barrier in American diplomacy, paving the way for future women to hold the nation's most visible foreign policy posts, and she remained in the role until 1985.