Laurent Rebours/AP

(born 1934). The first woman to serve as premier of France was Edith Cresson. She was premier from May 15, 1991, to April 2, 1992.

She was born Edith Campion on January 27, 1934, in Boulogne-Billancourt, a suburb of Paris, France. The daughter of a French civil servant, she studied at the School of Higher Commercial Studies, earning a doctorate in demography. In 1959 she married Jacques Cresson, an executive with the automaker Peugeot.

Edith Cresson joined the French Socialist Party in 1965. She worked vigorously in François Mitterrand’s failed presidential campaign of that year. Cresson ran unsuccessfully for a parliamentary seat in 1975; she was elected mayor of Thuré in 1977. Cresson later was elected to the European Parliament, serving in 1979–81. After Mitterrand was elected president of France in 1981, Cresson served in a number of ministries—agriculture, tourism and foreign trade, industry and foreign trade, and European affairs. She became known for her outspokenness and combativeness. Cresson was elected mayor of Châtellerault in 1983.

In 1986 Cresson was elected as a Socialist deputy from Vienne province. When Michel Rocard resigned the French premiership in 1991, Cresson’s friend Mitterrand appointed her premier. Cresson sought to improve France’s industrial competitiveness while reducing social inequities. However, rising unemployment and declining support for the Socialist Party among France’s voters prompted Mitterrand to replace Cresson as premier after she had been in office less than a year.


In 1995 Mitterrand appointed Cresson to serve as European commissioner for science, research, and education. Some of her subsequent decisions elicited controversy and criticism, as did her inaction to correct known financial irregularities. Cresson and the entire European Commission resigned in 1999 because of alleged fraud and corruption. Charges were brought against Cresson in 2003, although they were reduced the following year. In 2006 she was found guilty of favoritism and misconduct; however, no penalty or punishment was decreed.