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The First Women Leaders
Sixty-five years ago today politician Sirimavo Bandaranaike (pictured below) became the modern world’s first female head of government when she took office in Ceylon (later Sri Lanka). Since then only about one-third of the world’s countries have elected female leaders. Here are a few of those groundbreaking leaders, who also became the first to hold their title.

Bandaranaike may have been the first woman head of government, but Khertek Anchimaa-Toka was the first female head of state, serving as head of the parliament of the Tuvan People’s Republic from 1940 to 1944. She focused her efforts on the betterment and education of women in her country. Once elected chairwoman, Anchimaa led Tuva into World War II in 1941 on the side of the Allied powers, largely assisting the Soviet forces. She acted as head of state in Tuva until the country’s inclusion into the Soviet Union by a vote in 1944, afterward becoming deputy chair of the Tuvan executive committee until 1961.
First presidentIsabel Perón served as vice president of Argentina from 1973 to 1974 and then succeeded her husband, Juan Perón, in the office of president after his death. She served as president from 1974 to 1976. She wasn’t just Argentina’s first woman head of state, but also the first in all of South America.
First elected presidentPerón may have been the first to hold the office of president, but she was unelected. The first woman to be elected president was Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, who won the vote in Iceland in 1980. And with a term length of exactly 16 years, Finnbogadóttir also became the longest-serving woman head of state in any country in history.
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