seats and in the following election, Joshua stood as a candidate in the elections, becoming one of the first women to contest an election. On 24 September 1957, Joshua was confirmed as the assembly member for the North Windward Electoral District of Saint Vincent, becoming the first woman to serve in the island's Legislative Council. As both she and her husband won seats in the election, they became the first couple in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (and possibly the British West Indies) to hold office at the same time. Labor relations had cooled and there were no strikes between 1957 and 1961. Joshua was appointed as Minister of Social Services, overseeing education and housing in 1960. She was reelected for the same district in 1961, appointed as a Minister without portfolio and repeated the feat in 1964, winning by wide margins. In 1962, she was one of the leaders of the FIAWU strike over holiday pay at the Mt. Bentinck Sugar Factory, which eventually led to the closure of the plant. Joshua was forced to resign her position in the cabinet in 1964, though she retained her legislative seat, when the Colonial Secretary, Duncan Sandys and George Thompson, MP of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom brought questions in the London Parliament over her handling of the Public Works Department. Though standard practice in the 1960s for ministers across the Caribbean to trade jobs in the public works department for political support, when Joshua tried to place her supporters, she was called before a commission of inquiry. She resigned, but was found guilty of irregularities and misuse of public funds. That same year, she and Ebenezer worked to resolve a labor dispute for the dockworkers who were members of FIAWU. Installation of a conveyor belt from the dock to the ships, had caused alarm over whether dockworkers would be discharged and the Joshuas were able to negotiate an agreement to protect the workers. In 1966, Joshua was reelected with 82% of the vote. A petition was filed contesting the election by Milton Cato, of the Saint Vincent Labor Party, (SVLP), which had lost the election to Ebenezer Joshua's PPP by one vote. Cato alleged that Ivy Joshua was illiterate and without being able to read and write was incapable of understanding parliamentary procedure. Counter-charges were filed against SVLP member Levi Latham by Ebenezer Joshua, alleging he too