Anne Sinclair, Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s wife, named Woman of the Year

Anne Sinclair, the wife of disgraced former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has been voted Woman of the Year in a poll by a French women's magazine, AFP reported. 

Sinclair, 63, is a French journalist and wealthy art heiress, and was chosen in the CSA poll for online women's magazine Terrafemina as the woman who had "made her mark" the most in 2011. Sinclair stood by her husband as he faced accusations of sexually assaulting a hotel maid in New York, a scandal that made headlines worldwide and caused him to resign from his position at the International Monetary Fund. Sinclair was often seen publicly by Strauss-Kahn's side throughout the trial. Charges were dropped in August, but the scandal foiled DSK's ambitions to run for the French presidency, according to AFP.

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Out of 10 women who respondents were asked to rank, Sinclair received 25 percent of the votes. She was followed by current IMF chief Christine Lagarde, who received 24 percent. Martine Aubry, a runner-up to be the Socialist party candidate in next year's presidential election, got 23 percent. Eva Joly, the Green Party presidential candidate, got 11 percent of the votes and came seventh in the poll.

"I find it quite alarming, incredible even, that she can be considered more popular than the IMF's Christine Lagarde, a female politician of the first rank," Joly told i-Tele television, according to AFP. "I find this sad. It represents concepts of life and male-female relations that are very, very outdated." 

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The poll was conducted by telephone on December 6 and 7, and surveyed over 1,000 men and women.