Woman Leaders(PM and/or President) in the World - As of September 2011

 Pratibha Devisingh Patil (born 19 December 1934) is the 12th President of India and 1st woman to hold the office.She was sworn in as President of India on  July 25, 2007, succeeding Dr A P Abdul Kalam and after beating her rival Bhairon Singh Shekhawat. She is a member of INC and was nominated for the presidency by the ruling UPA and Left Parties.

Julia Eileen Gillard is the27th PM of Australia, in office since June 2010 representing the Australian Labour Party.Before this,she was Dy.PM under Kevin Rudd during December2007 to June 2010

Cristina Elisabet Fernández de Kirchner(born 19 February 1953) commonly known as Cristina Fernández or Cristina Kirchner(widow of former President Nestor Kirchner ), is the 55th President of Argentina  and the 1st elected female president and the 2nd female President ever to serve (after Isabel Perón 1974-76) She assumed office on December 10, 2007.

Angela Dorothea Merkel is the1st female Chancellor of Germany (since 22 November 2005) and has been the chairwoman of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) since 2000, and chairwoman of the CDU-CSU (Christian Social Union) parliamentary coalition from 2002 to 2005.

Dilma Vana Rousseff(born 14 December 1947) is the 36th President of Brazila and the 1st elected female president.Rousseff launched her campaign as the official presidential candidate for the Workers' Party in the 2010 Presential Elections.She was elected in a run-off on 31 October 2010 against Jose Serra and assumed office on January1,2011.

Iveta Radičová(born 7 December 1956) is the 1st female PM of Slovakia when she was sworn into office on July 8, 2010  as the head of a four-party center-right coalition government following the 2010 Slovak Parliamentary Elections.

Jadranka Kosor( born July 1, 1953) is the first female Prime Minister of Croatia  since independence,having taken office on July 6, 2009.

 Atifete Jahjaga (born 20 April 1975) is the 4th President of Kosovo.She is the first female, the first non-partisan candidate, and the youngest to be elected to the office.On 6 April 2011, she was announced as a consensual candidate for president of Kosovo by the Democratic Party of Kosovo,Democratic League of Kosovo and New Kosovo Alliance and supported by the US Ambassador in Kosovo.On April 7,2011, she was elected President on the first round of voting by the Parliament of 100 MPs present,of which 80 voted for Jahjaga.
Previously,she was the Deputy Director of the Kosovo Police holding the rank ofGeneral Major.

Laura Chinchilla Miranda (born 28 March 1959) is the 1st female President of Costa Rica.Previously, She was one of Oscar Arias Sanchez's two vice-presidents.She was the governing PLN(National Liberation Party) candidate for President in the 2010 Presidential Elections where she won with 46.76% of the vote and assumed office on May 8, 2010.

Tarja Kaarina Halonen (born 24 December 1943) is the 1st female President of Finland to hold the office from March 2000.Previously,she had  been a member of parliament from 1979 to 2000 - served in the parliament of Finland for 6 terms representing the Helsinki Constituency.

Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir(born 4 October 1942)is the  first female Prime Minister of Iceland on 1 February 2009.Previously,she was Iceland's Minister of Social Affairs and Social Security from 1987–1994 and 2007–2009

Mary Patricia McAleese(born 27 June 1951) is the 8th President of Ireland.McAleese is Ireland's 2nd female president. She was first elected president in 1997 and won a second term, without a contest, in 2004

Roza Isakovna Otunbayeva( born August 23, 1950) is the President of Kyrgyzstan from July 3, 2010, after acting as interim leader following the 2010 April Revolution  which led to the ousting of then President Kurmanbek Bakiyev.Previously,she was foreign minister.

Dalia Grybauskaitė(born 1 March 1956) is Lithuania's first female President having been inaugurated on 12 July 2009.Previously,she was Lithuania's Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Micheline Anne-Marie Calmy-Rey (born 8 July 1945)is the  President of Switzerland(President of Confederation)She has been a member of the Swiss Federal Council since 2003, and was President of the Confederation  in 2007 and again currently in 2011. She intends to resign in December 2011.

Yingluck Shinawatra(born 21 June 1967) is the 28th PM of Thailand and is the 1st female PM and the youngest Prime Minister of Thailand in over 60 years.In May 2011, the Pheu Thai Party,nominated Yingluck as their candidate for Prime Minister in the 2011 general election which the Pheu Thai Party won a landslide victory winning 265 seats in the 500 seat House of Representatives of Thailand.Yingluck has set up her Council of Ministers on 9 August. She and her Ministers were sworn in on  August 10,2011.

Sheikh Hasina(born September 28, 1947)is the eldest of five children of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman,the founding father (and first president) of Bangladesh  and widow of a reputed nuclear scientist,M A Wazed Miah.She has been the President of the Awami League, a major political party, since 1981.Sheikh Hasina's party defeated the BNP-led Four-Party Alliance in the 2008 Parliamentary Elections, thus assuring her of the post of prime minister. Sheikh Hasina has once before held the office, from 1996 to 2001.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (born 29 October 1938) is the 24th President of Liberia.She was elected President in the2005 Presidential Elections and took office on 16 January 2006.Previously,she served as Minister of Finance under President William Tolbert  from 1979 until the 1980 coupd'etat, after which she left Liberia and held senior positions at various financial institutions.She is the 1st and currently only elected female head of state in Africa.
                                                 
                                                 














Helle Thorning-Schmidt, leader of Denmark's Social Democrats and PM of Denmark  after the announcement of the Danish parliamentary elections in Copenhagen on September 16, 2011