Only 13 of 193 UN Member Nations Led by Women Currently

By: WE Staff | Tuesday, 3 March 2026

• Women serve as head of government in 13 of the 193 United Nations member countries
• Mia Mottley of Barbados was recently re-elected as prime minister

At this time, there are 13 women who are the leaders of 193 member nations of the United Nations. one of these is Mia Mottley (re-elected) from Barbados, another is Sanae Takaichi, from Japan who became the first female (and only the 10th female) head of state in her country following the recent parliamentary elections.

According to the Pew Research Center, she will be remembered as one of the first female government heads globally however, because she is not a first female head of state but succeeded a woman who had held that position in Japan previously.

So far, 63 different countries have had a woman lead them and the first of these was Sirimavo Bandaranaike in 1960 while she was Prime Minister of Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) and other than India and Israel in the 1970's they elected other than those two only one female head of government.

Since 1990, there has been a steady increase in countries with female heads of state. Between 2000 and 2005, Switzerland was the first country to elect a female head of state followed by Trinidad and Tobago, Slovakia, Kyrgyzstan and Australia in their first elections of a female head of state by 2010.

The current female head of state with the longest continuous service is Mia Motley, Prime Minister of Barbados. Mia coincidentally became the Prime Minister of her country on the same day as Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina stepped down amid intense anti-government protests in her country; she held the record at the time of her resignation for both: being the longest female head of state in history at 21+ years of service (including two years while prime minister) and at the time of her resignation (2024), becoming the oldest female leader in history at 74 years of age.

This report does not include non-UN female heads of state, or those that took office after 8 May 2025. (Other examples are Laura Fernández, who recently became the first female head of state for Costa Rica as well as Aung San Suu Kyi from Myanmar; they did not have effective leadership at any time).