German Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition defeated an election-year opposition bid Thursday to set a quota for female board members in a vote that exposed a party rift and forced her to give ground.

Times are changing as more and more women are taking to high office around the world; the US Senate has just announced that a record 20 seats are now held by women, which is considered to be a real leap forward in what has always been a male domain.

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Within minutes of being sworn in as governor of the southwest German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, Malu Dreyer turned to members of the opposition and gestured to lawmakers seated across the aisle from her center-left party, offering not a challenge, but an invitation.

Chancellor Angela Merkel won a second term in office on Sunday, telling Germans: "I'm very happy tonight." Born Angela Kasner in Hamburg in 1954, she moved with her family to East Germany when she was only a toddler after her father, a Protestant pastor, was offered a job in the state of Brandenburg, north of Berlin. She grew up in the town of Templin, in the Uckermark region with its lakes and rolling hills.
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