When Sirimavo Bandaranaike was sworn in as prime minister of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1960, she became the first woman in the world to hold that title. By the end of the decade, only India and Israel had elected women as prime minster, and as recently as the late 1980s, fewer than 5 percent of the world’s nations were concurrently led by women. Since then, the list has grown considerably, but as this map demonstrates, women heads of state are still the anomaly.
Music: Renewal by The David Roy Collective