Women Presidents and Prime Ministers

Ask your average American about female heads of state and my guess is that most could name a few - perhaps Margaret Thatcher, Cory Aquino or Angela Merkel, depending on their age and knowledge of history. But ask who was the very first woman in the 20th century to become prime minister of a nation and most would probably draw a blank. And if they had to guess the year -- how many would know it was 1960? And the country? Even more improbable - it was Sri Lanka. Even before Indira Gandhi and Golda Meir, Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka was blazing a trail for female politicians.

Since then, more than 50 women have been elected heads of state. Some countries, such as the Philippines, New Zealand and Ireland, have already elected women leaders two or more times (New Zealand has only had two female heads of state, but the current prime minister is serving her third term). Surprised? Then read on.

Isabel Peron of Argentina was the world's first woman president. She took office in 1974, becoming the first woman to lead a South American country. Like many other women who have become head of state, Peron was the wife of a previous president, Juan Peron, and she actually served as vice president during his third term.

When Juan Peron died in office of a heart attack, she assumed the presidency. But unlike Peron's second wife, Eva Peron, who became immortalized by the play "Evita," Isabel Peron was not popular and she was overthrown by a coup d'etat in March 1976.

Sirimavo Bandaranaike, prime minister of Sri Lanka - 1960, 1970, 1994

Indira Gandhi, prime minister of India - 1966, 1980

Golda Meir, prime minister of Israel - 1969

Isabel Peron, president of Argentina - 1974

Elisabeth Domitien, prime minister of Central African Republic - 1975

Margaret Thatcher, prime minister of Great Britain - 1979

Maria da Lourdes Pintasilgo, prime minister of Portugal - 1979

Lidia Gueiler Tejada, prime minister of Bolivia - 1979

Dame Eugenia Charles, prime minister of Dominica - 1980

Vigdis Finnbogadottir, president of Iceland - 1980

Gro Harlem Brundtland, prime minister of Norway - 1981, 1986, 1990

Milka Planinc, federal prime minister of Yugoslavia - 1982

Agatha Barbara, president of Malta - 1982

Maria Liberia-Peters, prime minister of Netherlands Antilles - 1984, 1988

Carmen Pereira, acting president of Guinea Bissau - 1984

Corazon Aquino, president of Philippines - 1986

Benazir Bhutto, prime minister of Pakistan - 1988, 1993

Kazimiera Danuta Prunskiene, prime minister of Lithuania - 1990

Violeta Chamorro, president of Nicaragua - 1990

Mary Robinson, president of Ireland - 1990

Ertha Pascal Trouillot, interim president of Haiti - 1990

Sabine Bergmann-Pohl, president of German Democratic Republic - 1990

Khaleda Zia, prime minister of Bangladesh - 1991, 2001

Edith Cresson, prime minister of France - 1991

Hanna Suchocka, prime minister of Poland - 1992

Kim Campbell, prime minister of Canada - 1993

Sylvie Kinigi, prime minister of Burundi - 1993

Agathe Uwilingiyimana, prime minister of Rwanda - 1993

Susanne Camelia-Romer, prime minister of Netherlands Antilles - 1993, 1998

Tansu Ciller, prime minister of Turkey - 1993

Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, president of Sri Lanka - 1994

Reneta Indzhova, interim prime minister of Bulgaria - 1994

Claudette Werleigh, prime minister of Haiti - 1995

Sheikh Hasina Wajed, prime minister of Bangladesh - 1996

Mary McAleese, president of Ireland - 1997

Pamela Gordon, premier of Bermuda - 1997

Janet Jagan, prime minister of Guyana - 1997

Jenny Shipley, prime minister of New Zealand - 1997

Ruth Dreifuss, president of Switzerland - 1999

Jennifer M. Smith, prime minister of Bermuda - 1998

Nyam-Osoriyn Tuyaa, acting prime minister of Mongolia - 1999

Helen Clark, prime minister of New Zealand - 1999

Mireya Moscoso, president of Panama - 1999

Vaira Vike-Freiberga, president of Latvia - 1999

Tarja Halonen, president of Finland - 2000

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, president of the Philippines - 2001

Mame Madior Boye, prime minister of Senegal - 2001

Megawati Sukarnoputri, president of Indonesia - 2001

Maria das Neves, Prime Minster of Sao Tome and Principe - 2002

Beatriz Merino, prime minister of Peru - 2003

Luisa Diogo, prime minister of Mozambique - 2004

Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany - 2005

Yulia Tymoshenko, prime minister of Ukraine - 2005

Michelle Bachelet, president of Chile - 2006

Micheline Calmy-Rey, president of Switzerland - 2006

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, president of Liberia - 2006

Han Myung-sook, prime minister of South Korea - 2006

Portia Simpson Miller, prime minister of Jamaica - 2006

Pratibha Devisingh Patil, president of India - 2007

Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, president of Argentina - 2007

Borjana Kristo, president of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzogovina - 2007

Zinaida Greceanii - prime minister of Moldova, 2008

Dalia Grybauskaite - president of Lithuania, 2009

Laura Chinchilla - president of Costa Rica, 2010

Kamla Persad Bissessar - prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, 2010

Julia Gillard - prime minister of Australia, 2010

Dilma Rousseff - president of Brazil, 2010

Yingluck Shinawatra - prime minister of Thailand, 2011

Victoria C. Woodhull was the first woman to run for president in the United States. She was selected by the Equal Rights Party to be its candidate in the 1872 election.

The Equal Rights Party platform supported women's right to vote and work, among other issues, but Woodhull was soundly defeated in the election by Ulysses S. Grant.

Elizabeth Dole also deserves recognition. She announced her intention to seek the Republican presidential nomination during the 2000 elections and campaigned for the position for several months in 1999. Due to lack of adequate fundraising, however, she dropped out of the race before any of the primaries.

Sri Lanka was the very first country to elect a female head of state. Sirimavo Bandaranaike was elected prime minister for the first time in 1960 (and later served two more terms) after her husband, Prime Minister Solomon Bandaranaike, was assassinated.

Thirty-four years after Mrs. Bandaranaike first served as PM, she was re-elected. In 1994, Sirimavo Bandaranaike took the office of prime minister again -- the same year her daughter, Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, was elected president of the country. You go, girls!

A few countries have already elected more than one woman to serve as head of state, but Ireland wins the prize for being the first to have one woman succeed another to the post. Ireland President Mary McAleese assumed the presidency from Mary Robinson in 1997 and was re-elected, without contest, to another seven-year term in 2004.

Although only a small number of women have been elected to lead countries, several have already been assassinated. Two were killed while in office. The third was killed while campaigning:

Indira Gandhi, India's first prime minister, was assassinated by her own bodyguards in 1984 while serving her fourth term as prime minister.

Agathe Uwilingiyimana, who served as prime minister of Rwanda for nearly a year, was assassinated by Hutu soliders in 1994 during the early days of the Rwanda genocide.

Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan's first female prime minister, was assassinated in 2007 while campaigning for another term in office.

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