The U.N. women’s club

Brooke D. Anderson, the outgoing chief of staff at the U.S. mission to the United Nations, was sworn in this morning as the new U.S. ambassador for special political affairs here, giving her oversight of U.N. peacekeeping, nonproliferation matters, and Security Council affairs.

Elizabeth Cousens, a former U.N. analyst and U.N. official who was a Rhodes Scholar along with Amb. Susan E. Rice, will replace Anderson as the mission’s chief of staff. Rosemary A. DiCarlo will be sworn in later this summer as Rice’s deputy U.N. ambassador.

The changes solidify the predominance of women in the primary U.S. policy positions dealing with the United Nations, where most governments have been slow to open their top diplomatic ranks to women. Other women in key positions overseeing U.N. policy:

• Hillary R. Clinton, U.S. Secretary of State.
• Esther Brimmer, the assistant secretary of state for International Organizations, which oversees U.N. affairs for the State Department
• Samantha Power, the senior director of multilateral affairs at the National Security Council, overseeing U.N. matters for the White House
• Betty E. King, the new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, who presented her credentials last month.

Anderson, who started out her career as a U.N. intern, has held policy positions in the White House, the Energy Department, and the U.S. Congress. Before coming to the United Nations, she served as the chief national security spokesperson for the Obam-Biden transition team. She previously worked as the communications at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, an arms control non-profit chaired by former Sen. Sam Nunn and CNN founder Ted Turner, and was vice president for communications at the Nuclear Security Project, which is headed by a bipartisan group including Nunn, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former Defense Secretary William Perry, and former Secretary of State George Shultz.

Cousens, who has served as Rice’s principal policy advisor since February 2009, was posted in Nepal as the U.N. mission’s chief of staff in the lead up to the election of the country’s transitional government in 2008. She also served as the vice president for the International Peace Academy, a New York-based think-tank that tracks U.N. issues.

The U.N. has long been identified with influential American women, most notably former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who played an influential role in securing the passage of the landmark Human Rights Declaration.

Former U.S. President Ronald Reagan appointed Jeanne Kirkpatrick as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. She was the first woman to serve in that post. Madeleine K. Albright, who served as former President Bill Clinton‘s envoy to the United Nations, used the position as a stepping stone to become the United States’ first female secretary of state.

There are a few guys still around. Glyn Davies is the Obama administration’s new U.S. ambassador to the U.N. in Vienna. Frederick “Rick” Barton was appointed U.S. representative to the U.N. Economic and Social Council. Alejandro D. Wolff is currently serving as Rice’s deputy. But he will be moving on in the summer, making way for Rosemary DiCarlo.