How many women presidents and prime ministers have served in your lifetime?
Originally published by Sammy Westfall and Dylan Moriarty for the Washington Post
Vice President Kamala Harris’s nomination makes her just the second female U.S. presidential candidate ever put forward by a major political party. Of the world’s 20 largest economies, the United States is among seven yet to have a woman as its head of state or government.
If you are over 65, then you were born in a time when no woman had led any country as president or prime minister. See how many countries have had women as heads of state or government during your lifetime. (That’s not counting monarchs.)
The first was Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) in 1960, who rose to power after the assassination of her husband, serving as prime minister.
Asked by a reporter about whether women would be more capable of solving the world’s problems, the new prime minister said with a smirk, “That’s left to be seen.”
Six years later came India’s Indira Gandhi. Early detractors belittled her as a “gungi gudiya” (dumb doll), but she went on to serve for nearly 16 years as one of India’s most consequential prime ministers. She left behind a mixed legacy including a 21-month state of emergency considered a dark chapter in the world’s largest democracy.
Then came Israel’s Golda Meir, who led during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. Israel’s founder, David Ben-Gurion, called her “the best man in the government.” She was born in Kyiv and immigrated to Milwaukee where she lived until she moved to Palestine under the British mandate in 1921. She resigned after criticism over how she handled the 1973 war.
Next was Argentina’s Isabel Perón, who led in the wake of her strongman husband’s death. Then Elisabeth Domitien was appointed as the Central African Republic’s prime minister in 1975.
Margaret Thatcher followed when her Conservative Party won Britain’s 1979 general election. For what was seen as her heavy hand and uncompromising politics, she was dubbed the “Iron Lady” — a moniker also given to her predecessors Meir and Gandhi, and a string of women leaders who followed.
Fast forward to today and you’ll find 174 women have led as heads of state or government across 87 countries. In June, Claudia Sheinbaum became Mexico’s first woman to be elected as president. She takes office Oct. 1.
Sheinbaum’s landslide win in a direct presidential election makes her stand out. Many more women are elected in parliamentary systems than in outright presidential elections.
Since 2020, only two countries (Honduras and Mexico) with presidential systems have elected a woman head of state, compared to seven women elected in semi-presidential systems, where a president and prime minister share executive power. In parliamentary and semi-presidential systems, 27 women were elected or appointed head of government since 2020, noted Julie Ballington, policy adviser on political participation for UN Women, a U.N. organization focused on gender equality and women empowerment that tracks global data on women leadership.
In a parliamentary system, women can rise through the ranks of their parties — chief executives are chosen by the majority party or coalition members. In contrast, presidential systems go head-to-head at the top of the ticket, which exacerbates the barriers — structural ones, and those rooted in bias and stereotypes — that make it difficult for women to rise up in power, she noted.
In Mexico, women now hold many senior government positions, including half of Congress, which means that gender was not a major issue in this year’s presidential race where the top two candidates were women. That capped decades of gender-balancing policies and reforms including a sweeping 2019 constitutional amendment seeking gender “parity in everything” throughout all three branches of government.
In the United States, only 28 percent of Congress is female.
The United States fell below 70 countries in the Council on Foreign Relations’ Women’s Power Index, which ranks countries on their progress toward gender parity in political participation.