Profiles: Women in Power

Over the past decades, women have made great strides in expanding their political power. Yet, the achievements of Angela Merkel, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Dilma Rouseff, Benazir Bhutto, Park Geun-hye, and, possibly, Hillary Clinton, remain the exception and not yet the rule as in most countries, women remain woefully under-represented at all levels of institutionalized political decision-making. Recent UN data show that just over 21 per cent of parliamentarians are women, up from around 11 per cent since the 1995 Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women. Additionally, women make up less than 10 per cent—eighteen— of the world’s heads of state and heads of government.

In this section, we showcase women leaders from around the world—present and past—their leadership style and assess the domestic and global impact of their administration.