We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 March 2022
Remarkable and limited
When Sirimavo Bandaranaike became the world's first woman prime minister of what was then Ceylon in 1960 it caused worldwide concern. How could a woman cope with such a demanding task?
Half a century later, the woman president of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, received the Peace Prize from an impressed Nobel Committee for her contribution to ‘ensuring peace, promoting economic and social development and strengthening the position of women’ (Norwegian Nobel Institute, 2011).
After Sirimavo Bandaranaike, 72 women have been presidents and prime ministers in 53 countries up to the end of 2010. They were top leaders in great and small nations, rich and poor, in north and south, east and west. They exercised power during crises and economic growth, transitional regimes and democracy, war and peace (see Figure 15).
When Australia got a woman prime minister in June 2010, the British newspaper The Independent announced that ‘Women are taking over the world’ (Battersby, 2010). Australia is an important country, but the truth was that the total number of women heads of state and government rose to 16 when Julia Gillard was elected. Later in 2010 it rose to 18 – or about 6 per cent of the world's presidents and prime ministers. This was more than ever before, but there was certainly still a way to go before women had control of the planet.
Since World War II, 28 per cent of the world's 192 states have had a woman national leader for a longer or shorter period of time. Among the world's 11 most populous states, with more than 100 million inhabitants, Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Indonesia and Pakistan have had the experience of a women head of state or government. But of the 2.8 billion people who have had a woman as president or prime minister, often brief episodes of female leadership did not change men's dominant position. And states with a total of 4 billion people have never had a woman as a top leader.
In the United Nations (UN) Security Council, only two of the five permanent member states have had women top leaders: Great Britain and, for a short period, France.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
