Esther Ouwehand

Esther Ouwehand (born 10 June 1976) is a Dutch politician and former marketing manager serving as leader of the Party for the Animals (Partij voor de Dieren, PvdD) and its parliamentary group in the House of Representatives since 2019. She has been a member of the House of Representatives since the 2006 election with two interruptions.

Personal life
Esther Ouwehand went to secondary school in Katwijk, where she finished her vwo (Dutch pre-university education). She studied "Policy, communication and organisation" (beleid, communicatie en organisatie) at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, which she did not finish.

She was raised a Protestant but is currently an agnostic. She is vegan.

Dutch webzine Lords of Metal conducted an interview with Esther Ouwehand in which she told about her deep rooted passion for hard rock and heavy metal music, in particular stoner metal.

Career
Initially, she did not consider a career in politics. She left a promising career in marketing, being junior marketing manager for youth magazines at Sanoma. She has additional functions as a committee member for youth centre "De Schuit" and the foundation "Factor Welzijn" in Katwijk.

Party for the Animals
She joined the Party for the Animals in October 2002 and became the party's co-ordinator in 2004. She was responsible for the management of the party's headquarters. She also co-authored the 2006 electoral program "220x liever..".

The general elections of 2006 were considered a great success for the party. The party gained 179,988 votes (1.8%), enough for two seats in the Dutch parliament. The party became the world's first party to gain parliamentary seats with an agenda focused primarily on animal rights.

She was second on the election list, right after party chairwoman Marianne Thieme. Consequently, she became a member of parliament, even though she received a total of 4.370 write-in votes, about a hundred less than lijstduwer Kees van Kooten, who received 4.479 votes. She was sworn in on 30 November 2006.

Contrary to her wishes she was not initially placed on the election list for the general elections of 2010, but the party members voted her on the second place, so she became re-elected.

Ouwehand temporarily resigned from the House on 17 November 2015 for health reasons and was replaced by Frank Wassenberg. She returned to the House on 18 October 2016.

On 8 October 2019, Ouwehand succeeded Marianne Thieme as parliamentary leader of the PvdD upon Thieme's retirement from the House of Representatives. She was the leader of the party in the 2021 House of Representatives elections. On October 11, 2022, she temporarily resigned her duties as MP and group chairman due to overwork, returning to the House of Representatives on 2 February 2023. Following her re-election in November 2023, she served as her party's spokesperson for agriculture next to her role as parliamentary leader.