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Roughly one in three UN member states have ever had a woman at the helm

Roughly one in three UN member states have ever had a woman at the helm

Currently, women are heads of government in only 13 of the 193 member states of the United Nations. That includes Mexico, where President Claudia Sheinbaum was sworn in this week as the country’s first female leader.

According to an analysis by the Pew Research Center, Mexico is one of nine countries where the current female head of government is the country’s first.

In total, 60 UN member states (31%) have ever had a woman as head of government. The first was Sri Lanka, then called Ceylon, where Sirimavo Bandaranaike began her first term as prime minister in 1960. Two other countries – India in 1966 and Israel in 1969 – saw their first female leaders this decade.

This analysis from the Pew Research Center examines the number of female heads of government in United Nations member states since the end of World War II. The data in this analysis comes primarily from the Council on Foreign Relations’ Women’s Power Index, last updated on August 20, 2024. The Center updated these figures through October 1, 2024, using independent sources and filtering to include only female leaders of the government as defined in the country’s political system or constitution.

Depending on the country, “head of government” could mean president or prime minister, but not both. In limited cases, that leader may not be the one who wields the most power in their current government. Heads of state, monarchs, co-presidents, joint heads of state and interim leaders are excluded from this analysis. In countries with collective heads of government, this analysis recognizes the presiding member.

Worldwide, the number of countries with female managers has increased steadily since 1990. The largest single-year increase was in 2010, when five countries – Australia, Costa Rica, Kyrgyzstan, Slovakia and Trinidad and Tobago – were led by a woman for the first time.

60 countries have ever had a female leader

When the first female head of government of each country took office

Note: The figures refer to October 1, 2024. The data is limited to the heads of government of the 193 UN member states.
Source: Pew Research Center analysis of Council on Foreign Relations data and independent sources.

Mia Mottley, the Prime Minister of Barbados, is currently the longest-serving woman. Mottley has been in power for more than six years.

Related: Would electing more officials from diverse backgrounds improve politics?

The title of the longest-serving female head of government in modern history is held by former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Hasina spent a total of more than 20 years in power, but resigned earlier this year and fled Bangladesh as mass protests against a quota system for government jobs morphed into a more violent movement against her government. (She was also the oldest female executive, according to a separate Pew Research Center analysis.)

Some notable female executives are not included in this analysis. For example, Kosovo currently has a female president (Vjosa Osmani) but is excluded because it is not a UN member state. In San Marino, we excluded Francesca Civerchia – one of two “regent captains” of the small European nation appointed earlier this week – because the position is shared.

Former Female leaders such as Tsai Ing-wen in Taiwan and Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar (formerly Burma) are excluded for similar reasons: lack of UN membership and lack of clear government control, respectively. For more methodological details, see “How we did it.”

Note: This is an update to a post originally published on July 30, 2015.