Top 10 Countries With Female Leaders (Presidents and PMs)

Having a female leader in a country is no longer a big deal, unlike many years ago when the “most eligible” leadership candidates were men. The world is gradually changing with many countries electing and appointing female leaders as heads of State and government.

In this article, we will highlight 10 countries with females as their current Presidents and Prime Ministers (PMs). Since this list consists of both Presidents and PMs, let’s briefly see the difference between both positions/offices.

Difference Between a President and Prime Minister

In a semi-presidential system of Government, a President exists alongside a Prime Minister. The President is the Head of State while the Prime Minister functions as the Head of Government. According to Britannica, the Prime Minister primarily “sets the national agenda, appoints cabinet officials, and governs at the behest of a party or a coalition of parties”, while the President serves as the ceremonial head of the nation.

Some governments, however, do not have Presidents. They have Prime Ministers who lead the government and select other ministers. One of such governments is the government of the United Kingdom.

That said, here are the Top 10 Countries with Female Leaders.

10. Jacinda Ardern- New Zealand Prime Minister

First on our list of countries with female leaders is Jacinda Ardern, who became the 40th Prime Minister of New Zealand in 2017. She is the head of the government of New Zealand and the leader of the “Labour Party”, which she joined at the age of 17.

As the prime minister, she ranks as the most senior government minister. She is responsible for chairing meetings of the Cabinet, providing advice to the sovereign or the sovereign’s representative, allocating posts to ministers within the government, and most importantly, acting as the spokesperson for the government.

Ardern attended the University of Waikato and graduated with a Bachelor of Communication Studies (BCS) in politics and public relations in 2001. She is 42 years old.

9. Maia Sandu- President of Moldova

Maia Sandu is a Moldovan and Romanian citizen who became the president of Moldova on December 24, 2020. She was the former leader of the Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) and former Prime Minister of Moldova from June to November 2019.

Sandu declared her presidential intentions in July 2020, officially launching her campaign in October. She held 2 speeches in Romanian and Russian, promising to fight poverty and corruption and also reform the criminal justice system.

As stipulated in the 1994 constitution of Moldova, Sandu, and her opponent, Don had a run-off election since no candidate received a majority of votes in the first round. She emerged as the winner with 57.75% of the popular vote. Maia Sandu is 50 years old.

8. Sheikh Hasina- Prime Minister of Bangladesh

Sheikh Hasina has been the Prime Minister of Bangladesh since January 2009. She first served as the Prime Minister from 1996-2001 before continuing in 2009. She was re-elected for a third term in a 2014 election that was boycotted by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.

She is currently the longest-serving Prime Minister in Bangladesh’s history, serving for a total of 18 years so far. She is also the longest-serving elected female head of government in the world. She also holds several world rankings as one of the most powerful women in the world. Sheikh Hasina is 74 years old.

7. Paula-Mae Weekes- President of Trinidad and Tobago

Paula Mae Weekes has been serving as the President of Trinidad and Tobago since March 2018. Her election makes her the sixth President of the Caribbean country. She also holds the title of the second female head of state in Trinidad and Tobago after Elizabeth II as well as the second female president of African descent in the Americas.

Before her emergence as the Presidential candidate, she worked in the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions for 11 years, before delving into private practice in 1993. She was also appointed to the judiciary in 1996 and the Court of Appeals in 2005 until she retired in 2016.

She also served as acting Chief Justice in 2012 before being appointed to the appeals court in the Turks and Caicos in 2016. Weekes is 63 years old.

6. Vjosa Osmani- President of Kosovo

Vjosa Osmani is the current President of Kosovo; she assumed office in April 2021.

The president of the Republic of Kosovo is the head of State and chief representative of the country both at home and abroad. Presidents in the country are elected indirectly by the Assembly of Kosovo, via a secret ballot by a two-thirds majority of deputies in functions. If no candidate gets a two-thirds majority, the candidate who receives a simple majority at the third ballot is elected.

Prior to her election as president, Osmani held many positions including “advisor to the then president, Fatmir Sejdiu”. She was also the speaker of the Assembly from 2020 to 2021, serving as acting president between November 2020 and March 2021.

Osmani is the second female president of Kosovo; the first female president was Atifete Jahjaga.

5. Mette Frederiksen- Prime Minister of Denmark

Mette Frederiksen is the fifth on our list of top 10 countries with female leaders. She has held the position of Denmark’s Prime Minister since June 2019. She has also been the leader of the Social Democrats since June 2015.

The 44-year-old Danish politician was elected to the Folketing in the 2001 general election, representing Copenhagen County. She was then appointed Minister of Employment by Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt after the Social Democrats won the 2011 general election.

Later on, she was promoted to Minister of Justice in 2014. Frederiksen won the subsequent leadership election to replace Thorning-Schmidt after the Social Democrats’ narrow defeat in the 2015 general election. She led her party to the 2019 general election, winning a majority in the Folketing. She was commissioned by Queen Margrethe II to lead negotiations to form a new government, before being sworn in as prime minister in June 2019.

Frederiksen is the second woman to become the Prime Minister of Denmark so far. She is also the youngest prime minister in Danish history.

4. Halimah Yacob- President of Singapore

Halimah Yacob is the first female president of Singapore. She has been serving as the eighth president of the country since 2017. Prior to her election as the president, she was the nation’s parliament speaker.

Her career began as a legal officer at the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) where she became the director of its legal services department in 1992. She was equally the director of the Singapore Institute of Labour Studies in 1999. The institute is now known as “Ong Teng Cheong Labour Leadership Institute”.

She was a Member of Parliament (MP) and a member of the governing People’s Action Party (PAP). She however resigned from the party, running for the 2017 presidential election independently. She won the uncontested election after the other candidates did not meet the qualification criteria.

Halima Yacob is 67 years old.

3. Bidhya Devi Bhandari- President of Nepal

Bidhya Devi Bhandari is the second president of Nepal and has been holding the position since 2015. She was the country’s Minister of Defence, and Minister of Environment and Population.

She served as the Communist Party of Nepal’s vice-chairperson (Unified Marxist–Leninist) and was the chair of the “All Nepal Women’s Association” before she was elected as president. She was also the Minister of Environment and Population in 1997. She is equally an advocate of women’s rights in the country.

In 2016, Forbes listed the 61-year-old president as number 52 on their list of the world’s 100 most powerful women. She is the first woman to hold the office of the country’s president.

2. Katerina Sakellaropoulou- President of Greece

66-year-old Katerina Sakellaropoulou has been the president of Greece since March 2020. She was elected by the Hellenic Parliament on January 22, 2020, as a successor to Prokopis Pavlopoulos. Before her election as president, she was the president of the Council of State- the highest administrative court of Greece.

She has also been a member of the Association of Judiciary Functionaries of the Council of State. In her tenure at the association, she served as its secretary-general (1985–1986), vice-president (2006–2008), and president (1993–1995, 2000–2001).

Her presidential election saw her bag 261 MPs voting in her favour in the 300-seat Parliament. Sakellaropoulou joins the list of the first female presidents as Greece had never recorded a female president before her election.

1. Salome Zourabichvili- President of Georgia

Salome Zourabichvili is the first woman on our top 10 list of countries with female leaders. She assumed office in 2018 as the fifth president of Georgia.

Zourabichvili founded a political party in 2006 called “The Way of Georgia” after a falling out with the country’s then-president- Mikheil Saakashvili. She was elected to the Georgian Parliament as an independent in 2016. After being worn in as president, she stepped down from her parliamentary seat. Zourabichvili was supported by the governing Georgian Dream party during the 2018 presidential election. She won in a run-off vote against Grigol Vashadze.

The 70-year-old president will be the last president to be elected directly by its citizens. This is as a result of the country’s transition to a fully parliamentary system of government.

Top 10 Countries With Female Leaders (Summary)

Here’s a compiled, straightforward list of countries with female leaders in the world.

1. Salome Zourabichvili- President of Georgia
2. Katerina Sakellaropoulou- President of Greece
3. Bidhya Devi Bhandari- President of Nepal
4. Halimah Yacob- President of Singapore
5. Mette Frederiksen- Prime Minister of Denmark
6. Vjosa Osmani- President of Kosovo
7. Paula-Mae Weekes- President of Trinidad and Tobago
8. Sheikh Hasina- Prime Minister of Bangladesh
9. Maia Sandu- President of Moldova
10. Jacinda Ardern- New Zealand Prime Minister