After extensive consultations with the CIA World Factbook and Google, I count
14 countries currently led by women. The roll call:
1. Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh. Prime Minister since 2009, currently in her third term. She's #10 on
Fortune magazine's
list of "The World's 50 Greatest Leaders", which loses a lot of its shine when you see she's right ahead of... Nick Saban, and four behind... John Legend. Bangladesh has been led by one of two women, either Sheikh Hasina or Khaleda Zia, continuously since 1991.
2. Michelle Bachelet, Chile. President from 2006-2010 and 2014-present. Chile does not allow its President to serve consecutive terms. Her popularity rating plunged in 2015 after her son and his wife were
accused of using political influence to get a $10 million bank loan they used to flip a property to earn millions of dollars in just a few weeks. I believe we would call that "Whitewater" in the U.S.
3. Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, Croatia. President since 2015. Croatia's first woman president and its youngest (46). She's a graduate of... Los Alamos High School in New Mexico. She was an exchange student. Googling her name quickly pops up a bunch of swimsuit photos that aren't her; they're actually of Coco Austin (married to "Ice-T").
4. Angela Merkel, Germany. The current longest incumbent woman leader, chancellor of Germany since 2005. She and her husband are both quantum chemists. She's second on
Fortune's "World's 50 Greatest Leaders", so she at least beat out John Legend. Not Jeff Bezos, though.
5. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberia. President since 2006, now in her second term. Liberia's president serves a six-year term and is limited to being renewed once. One of three women awarded the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize.
6. Dalia Grybauskaite, Lithuania. President since 2009, now in her second term. She is the first Lithuanian president to be re-elected and reportedly has a black belt in karate. She is joined by President Park of South Korea and President Tsai of Taiwan in the even more exclusive club of never-married women world leaders.
7. Hilda Heine, Marshall Islands. Elected President January 27th, and since they don't waste time in the Marshall Islands, was sworn into office January 28th. Makes sense, she ran unopposed.
Wikipedia says she is the first person from her country to achieve a doctorate. She earned her doctor's in education from USC in 2004.
8. Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar. State Counsellor since April 6th. Her fight to bring democracy to Myanmar goes back to 1988, and she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. So the military government rewrote the country's constitution in 2008 in a way that made her ineligible to be President. Despite that, throughout the 2015 election campaign, Suu Kyi made it clear she would be the leader of the country if her party won. It did, sweeping the old military government out of power in a landslide, and creating the office of State Counsellor, essentially a prime ministerial role, for her. Legally she answers to the President, but it's pretty obvious who's really in charge in Nay Pyi Taw.
9. Nepal, Bidhya Devi Bandhari. President since 2015. The CIA's
list of Chiefs of State misspells her first name. (It also lists the wrong leader of Trinidad and Tobago, if anyone cares.) Nepal was a monarchy up until 2008, when it became a republic. Bandhari served in Nepal's parliament and was the republic's first defense minister.
10. Norway, Erna Solberg. Prime Minister since 2013. She's been the leader of Norway's Conservative Party since 2004. Keep an eye out, though - difficulties negotiating Norway's budget could lead to her seeking a vote of confidence from Parliament this weekend, which could have the potential to force her out of office.
11. Poland, Beata Szydlo. Prime Minister since 2015, but maybe not a world leader. She holds the office regarded as Poland's most powerful, but much like Myanmar, the majority party leader is probably more powerful than the country's titular leader. And rumor has it that Poland's majority leader wants to replace Szydlo as prime minister with... himself. Szydlo grew up in coal mining country, near the town of Brzeszcze, which reminds me that 'Z' probably isn't worth 10 points in Polish Scrabble.
12. South Korea, Park Geun-hye. President since 2013. How much longer, though, is hard to say. There have been mass demonstrations in Seoul for weeks demanding that she step down. She's accused of letting a long-time friend interfere in state affairs, which includes giving her improper access to confidential government documents and letting her shake down corporations into donating millions of dollars to her. This "friend", Choi Soon-sil, has also been accused of embezzling the President's entire wardrobe allowance, which is kind of sad. Adding a little Nancy Reagan to the this controversy's Hillary Clinton vibe, Choi is the daughter of a former cult leader who consulted Park's father when he was President and is said to have played a large role in raising her.
13. Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen. President since May 20th. She's a law professor whose cats, Cookie and A-Tsai, were featured in her campaign. Possibly for diversity's sake, she adopted three dogs upon becoming President.
14. United Kingdom, Theresa May. Prime Minister since July 13th. To the best of my ability to tell, she is the world's most powerful type 1 diabetic. (Second? Sonia Sotomayor.) She met her husband while both were students at Oxford, and it's said they were introduced by fellow student/future Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
14 women-led countries is down from 18 a couple of years ago. We'll keep an eye on the state of women heads of state here at Trivia Road until the distinction becomes, rightly, a little less trivial.
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