This is an accepted version of this page Pauline Marois (French: [pɔlin maʁwa]; born March 29, 1949) is a retired Canadian politician, who served as the 30th premier of Quebec from 2012 to 2014.

In spite of internal strife in 2011 and early 2012, where she survived several challenges to her leadership from prominent members of her caucus – earning her the nickname Dame de béton,[9] "Concrete Lady" – she led the Parti Québécois to victory with a minority government in the 2012 Quebec general election, thus becoming the first female premier in the province's history.

[13][14] Her electoral defeat marked the shortest stay of any Quebec provincial government since the Canadian Confederation and the lowest showing for the PQ since its first general election in 1970.

[17][18] She was raised in a small two-story brick house built by her father in Saint-Étienne-de-Lauzon, a village now amalgamated with the city of Lévis, facing the provincial capital on the south shore of the Saint Lawrence River.

Marois has recalled that her father was sympathetic to the ideas of the Social Credit and the Union Nationale party; he kept current with the news and even bought the family a television set in the early 1950s.

[19][21] She first attended the small parish school in nearby Saint-Rédempteur, where Marois recalls that she excelled in French, history and geography, developed an interest for reading and received numerous books as prizes for her academic achievements.

At the age of 12, she was enrolled at Collège Jésus-Marie de Sillery, an exclusive, all-girl, Catholic private school attended by the offspring of the local bourgeoisie, an episode she describes as a "culture shock", leaving a permanent mark on her outlook and future choices.

[21][22] According to her autobiography, Marois became aware of her lower social status in school and in the affluent houses of Sillery, where she sometimes gave a hand to her mother, who did housecleaning jobs to pay tuition.

Despite their differences – Blanchet was a budding entrepreneur who bought his first gas station at the age of 17, while a student in business administration — the young couple began a lifelong relationship.

[25] At the time, the region was rapidly expanding due to the growth of the federal bureaucracy and the construction of administrative buildings on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River was met with opposition, according to Marois, because it did not take "into account the needs and the housing conditions of the local population.

[40] Marois played a minor role in the turmoil and infighting that shook the Lévesque cabinet after the election of Brian Mulroney as the new Canadian prime minister, in the fall of 1984.

She was first approached by Pierre-Marc Johnson, the leader of the kangaroo faction – favourable to reaching some accommodations with the new Conservative government —, but finally joined the more hardline group – the caribou —, who oppose the affirmation nationale agenda and call for the respect of PQ orthodoxy.

[41] On November 9, 1984, she was one of the 12 signatories of a letter in which half of René Lévesque ministers disavowed the beau risque strategy advocated by the Premier and called upon him to put sovereignty at the heart of the next election campaign.

In an interview she gave Le Devoir in late January 1988, she took shots at the front runner and former colleague, Jacques Parizeau, criticizing his "unacceptable attitude towards women and his outdated conception of social democracy".

[47][48] Less than 10 days later, Parizeau met Marois and convinced her to return to the PQ national executive as the person in charge of the party platform[49] and asked her to run in the Anjou district, left vacant by Johnson's resignation.

[citation needed] She also successfully piloted Bill 109, replacing of confessional school boards by language-based ones implementing a bilateral amendment to the Canadian constitution with the Jean Chrétien's Liberal government in Ottawa in 1997.

[57][58] During her years as Cabinet minister, Marois' husband, Claude Blanchet, was named president of the Société générale de financement (SGF), the investment arm of the Quebec government.

His substantial personal investments in public companies doing business with the government have put Marois into an uncomfortable position as a political figure, especially during the years she was minister of finance and deputy premier.

Although many in the PQ saw her as one of the most influential ministers ever to serve in Quebec's history, raising expectations that she would one day lead the party back to victory, Marois retired from the National Assembly in March 2006, stating that after 25 years in elected politics, it was time for her to pursue other interests.

[64] Marois's campaign signs displayed her image on a blue-green background along with the slogan "Chez nous, c'est Pauline" in an effort to claim a return to the PQ's nationalist beginnings.

[72] In September 2007, she proposed a strategic plan for helping the forestry sector, which has been hard hit in recent years by the closure of several mills in western and central Quebec.

In another scandal, after weeks of pointed questioning by PQ critic Nicolas Girard, Family minister Tony Tomassi resigned in May 2010 over allegations of improperly receiving and using a private company credit card to pay for expenses in exchanges for daycare licences.

Her defeat included the surprise loss of her own seat of Charlevoix-Côte-de-Beaupré by 882 votes[90] to Caroline Simard, whom supporters of Marois had widely accused of being a Liberal Party paper candidate.

House Leader Jean-Marc Fournier also made a parallel between the proposed bill and Jacques Parizeau's "Money and the ethnic vote" speech following the 1995 referendum, while Cabinet Minister Benoit Pelletier added that it would violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In reply to the Charter of Values, the Deputy Chief of Staff for Minister Jean-François Lisée, resigned his post with the PQ stating that her conscience would not allow her to defend the campaign.

[102] The Montreal Jewish General Hospital leadership criticized the charter of values, suggesting that a third of its staff would be forced to give up their employment because they wear kippahs, hijabs or turbans.

[105] In March 2014, Marois was accused of antisemitism by The Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) surrounding the statements made by party member Louise Mailloux.

[106] Mailloux had written statements equating the Jewish practice of circumcision to rape and claimed that halal and kosher food prices were kept high to fund religious activities abroad.

In mid-October 2012, she participated at the Francophonie Summit in Kinshasa, but declined to meet with host, Democratic Republic of the Congo's President Joseph Kabila, who was reelected in a contested general election in 2011.

[113] In December, she visited New York City and a month later attended the World Economic Forum in Davos to meet investors and political leaders, including African Union president Thomas Boni Yayi, Mexico's Finance Secretary Luis Videgaray Caso, European commissioner Michel Barnier, French Economy Minister Pierre Moscovici and the Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia, Hannelore Kraft.