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"Last Saturday, your basic group-shot selfie got taken up several amazing notches when the defense ministers of Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Germany&amp;amp;mdash;all majorly powerful women&amp;amp;mdash;posed together for this photo at an annual security conference at Munich&amp;#x27;s Bayerischer Hof Hotel. According to The Guardian, defense ministers Ine Eriksen S&amp;amp;oslash;reide (Norway), Karin Enstr&amp;amp;ouml;m (Sweden), and Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert (Netherlands), seated in that order, were welcoming their new German counterpart, Ursula von der Leyen (far right), when Belgium&amp;#x27;s (male) defense minister, Pieter De Crem, saw them and joked, &amp;quot;Oh, I&amp;#x27;ll better get out of the picture.&amp;quot; That&amp;#x27;s when Hennis-Plasschaert, asked someone to capture the scene on her phone and tweeted the photograph that quickly went viral. So why all the excitement about a group of women who are simply doing their jobs? For one, the photo is a nice reminder that women are increasingly coming into powerful roles that were once almost exclusively been held by men. In fact, two of the four defense ministers in this photo&amp;amp;mdash;Germany&amp;#x27;s von der Leyen and the Netherlands&amp;#x27; Hennis-Plasschaert&amp;amp;mdash;are the first women to ever be named defense minister in their respective countries. All four are more than qualified: Hennis-Plasschaert entered the cabinet in November 2012 after a short but distinguished career in the European parliament. Enstr&amp;amp;ouml;m, is the only one of the four women with professional experience in the armed forces, holding the rank of captain in the Swedish marines. Eriksen S&amp;amp;oslash;reide has been rising in Norwegian politics since she was asked to chair parliament&amp;#x27;s education committee at the age of 29. And von der Leyen is said to be an obvious successor to Germany&amp;#x27;s current chancellor, Angela Merkel. Less than two months ago, Merkel handpicked von der Leyen for the role, showing that if you elect one woman into a powerful position, she&amp;#x27;ll bring even more great women into the political fold. Cheers to that."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/inspired/blogs/the-conversation/2014/02/four-european-countries-now-ha>