Brazil Enters Growing Club

By electing Dilma Rousseff today, Brazil enters a growing club of countries with Women at the helm. Here is a list of the other women who are currently in the position of President or Prime Minister.

1. Laura Chinchilla
2. Christina Fernandez de Kirchner
3. Julia Gillard
4. Dalia Grybauskaite
5. Tarja Halonen
6. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf
7. Mari Kiviniemi
8. Jandranka Kosor
9. Mary McAleese
10. Angela Merkel
11. Roza Otunbayeva
12. Pratibha Patil
13. Kamla Persad-Bissessar
14. Iveta Radicová
15. Dilma Rousseff
16. Jóhanna Sigurdardóttir
17. Sheikh Hasina Wajed

That's 17 women governing nations with a combined population of 1,731,489,402 or about 25% of the world's total population (17.3% is represented by India alone!) Of the 10 largest nations women have held the reigns of leadership in two more of them in the past, Indonesia (4th) and Pakistan (6th) -- both decidedly Muslim nations, how ironic.

Can you Match them to their countries? Two of these women represent the same country, one as President and one as Prime Minister. (The italics represents the nation's ranking in terms of size in the 224 nations recognized as political sovereignties in the world today.)

A. Argentina (33rd)
B. Australia (52nd)
C. Bangladesh (7th)
D. Brazil (5th)
E. Costa Rica (118th)
F. Croatia (122nd)
G. Finland (112th)
H. Germany (15th)
I. Iceland (175th)
J. India (2nd)
K. Ireland (120th)
L. Kyrgyzstan (109th)
M. Liberia (125th)
N. Lithuania (134th)
O. Slovakia (111th)
P. Trinidad & Tobago (151st)

Other notable former women leaders of the modern era include:

Golda Meir who led Israel from 1969 to 1978 and was probably the first female head of state that I was aware of as a kid. I grew up in a family where the ritual of watching the nightly news together was more sacred than eating dinner as a family.
Indira Gandhi who led India twice from 1966 to 1977 and again from 1980 until her assassination in 1984. At the time of her death I was living in Costa Rica and this may be hard to believe, but without the internet and no cable TV, my only source of English news was shortwave radio! Voice of America called it a KGB plot, and Radio Moscow blamed the CIA--it was up to Radio Free Netherlands to get the call right and identify it as the work of a Sikh extremist!
Margaret Thatcher who held sway over Parliament in the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990.
Isabel Martínez de Perón of Argentina (a.k.a. Evita!) who's tenure from 1974 to 1976 actually only lasted 632 days, while the Musical that immortalized her flamboyant life managed to keep going from 1979 to 1983 and crank out 1567 performances. The people of Argentina should have been so lucky!
Vigdis Finnbogadóttir of Iceland! She is the longest serving female head of state in modern history with 16 years to her credit from 1980 to 1996. And she was the women who hosted the Reykjavík Summit between Reagan and Gorbachev that eventually stopped the madness of nuclear arms proliferation.
There were also, Corazon Aquino of the Philippines, Mary Robinson of Ireland, Violetta Chamorro of Nicaragua (I've driven past her house!), Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo of the Philippines, Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan and Megawati Sukarnoputri of Indonesia.

Who will come to join that club from the United States? Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, or someone still in the wings? A senator perhaps like Claire McCaskill of Missouri or the soon to be re-elected Independent Lisa Murkowski of Alaska? How about a governor? Maybe the soon to be elected Nikki Hailey of South Carolina, or Jan Brewer of Arizona? Or will we choose an outsider, like California did when they elected Arnold Schwartznegger as governor? Oprah Winfrey? I understand she's soon to be available!