US yet to join ranks of countries with female leaders

Mona Chalabi

Fifty countries around the world have seen a female head of government – but Donald Trump’s stunning win denied Hillary Clinton her spot in history.

After 240 years of men in the job, the United States will have to wait at least another four years to hear the words “Madam President” after Hillary Clinton was defeated by Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

But outside the US, history looks very different.

In 50 countries around the world, citizens have already seen a female head of government – and of those, 46 have had a female head of state who wasn’t a monarch.

Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) was the first country in the world to elect a female head of government, in July 1960. Indira Gandhi became the first female prime minister of India in 1966, and three years later Golda Meir became Israel’s first female head of government. Elisabeth Domitien came next, appointed first female prime minister of the Central African Republic over 40 years ago, in 1975.

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The Central African Republic, like 33 other countries, has yet to have a second female head of government. A clear exception to the “one and done” rule is Bangladesh, where citizens have democratically elected a female head of state four times in the country’s history.

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 Photograph: Mona Chalabi

Overall counts of female leaders vary, though. The World Economic Forum estimates that 52 countries have had a female head of state before the US, but it appears they occasionally confuse the role with a female head of government – as several readers pointed out in July.

For example, the United Kingdom and its constituent nations have had female heads of state for centuries, among them Queen Anne, Queen Victoria and the current Queen Elizabeth. But table C14 of their 2016 Global Gender Gap suggests the UK has had a female head of state for only 12 years (which is actually the total number of years that Margaret Thatcher and the current prime minister, Theresa May, have been in office). These graphics use the summaries on Wikipedia.

Let us know if you think anything is missing in the comments below. You can see more of my data sketches here.