The United States is approaching a milestone moment, inching towards a major political crossroads. Will Kamala Harris, America's first female vice-president, now become the first woman to hold the title of US President and Commander-in-Chief??
Amid the fevered fray of US politics during months of campaigning, this question about whether a woman, especially one of African-Asian descent, can hold the highest political office in the world's most powerful democracy has been asked time and again.?
Yet in parts of the world that draw far less attention the question has already been answered with an emphatic "yes".
From Sirimavo Bandaranaike, who was the first woman elected as a head of state anywhere in the world when she became prime minister of what is now Sri Lanka in 1960, to Mexico's Claudia Sheinbaum, who took office as president on October 1 this year after running against another female candidate, women have reached the highest political office for decades.
Australians don't have to look far to see where women have surmounted obstacles of cultural, social, political and economic norms to rise to power. Julia Gillard faced substantial backlash and negative commentary focused largely on her gender after becoming Australia's first female prime minister in 2010.
As well as one female PM, Australia has appointed two female governors-general: Dame Quentin Bryce, who was in office from 2008-2014, and Sam Mostyn, who took office in July.? Just across the Tasman, New Zealand has already had three female prime ministers - Jenny Shipley, Helen Clark and Jacinda Adern.
Female leaders have had impact across Asia, too, from Myanmar and the Philippines to Thailand, South Korea and more. In Europe and the UK, female leaders from Britain's Margaret Thatcher who rose to power in 1979 to Italy's current leader Giorgia Meloni elected in 2022, have been plentiful compared with many other parts of the world.
Yet the fact remains that women are vastly outnumbered by men in political leadership.?
Only 31 per cent of United Nations' member states have ever had a female leader. That's 60 countries out of 193.?
Today's figures are even lower: women serve as the head of government in just 13 of 193 UN member states, according to the Pew Research Centre.
But progress continues to be made, even in those regions where women's place in power is radically redefining generations of gender role-modelling and where added barriers such as poverty and lack of education remain entrenched.
Here is a snapshot of some areas where woman are having a political impact.
In the Pacific, female leadership is rare
A little more than a week ago the prime minister of Samoa, Fiame Naomi Mata'afa, welcomed leaders of the Commonwealth including King Charles III and Queen Camilla for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.
In the Pacific, female leadership is the lowest of anywhere in the world. Only one other woman has been head of state of a Pacific nation: Hilda Heine, the former president of the Marshall Islands.
In a political career spanning more than 30 years, Fiame's rise to become the top politician in her nation has not been without struggle. On many occasions her status as a woman was held against her: as deputy PM in 2016 she was criticised by male colleagues who questioned her authority on matters concerning children because she was not a mother.?
"I don't think there's any other stronger power than the power of a love of a parent for their child. And I may not have children but I know that because I had parents," she responded, before shutting down the questioning.?
"We're here as ministers of government, and it's our business to determine the policies … so let's keep the conversation where it should be."?
So how did Fiame overcome scepticism about her gender and win over her nation?
Fiame resigned as deputy PM in 2020 and headed a new political party so she could run against Samoa's longest-serving prime minister, Tuila'epa Sa'ilele Malielegaoi, in the hotly-contested 2021 general election.
A battle over the official election results followed, but Fiame's right to rule was laid to rest after a Court of Appeal decision.
In Latin America, a new era for women has dawned
In Latin America, the right to vote was granted to women in Equador in 1929, but women Paraguay waited until 1961. More recently the region has experienced a powerful new era for women in politics.
Mexico's first female president, Claudia Sheinbaum, who has been in office barely a month, moved into politics after a career as a climate scientist and joint winner of a Nobel Prize in 2007 as part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
She has a huge majority — dominating both chambers of the national congress — but an equally giant task ahead with violence and organised crime at the top of her to-do list.?
Surpassing even Sheinbaum's achievement, the high-water mark of female leadership in Latin American was perhaps a period of 58 days in 2014 when four female heads of state were in office at the same time in Chile, Argentina, Costa Rica and Brazil.
Michelle Bachelet — who lived in Sydney during her 20s when her family fled persecution and the death of her father at the hands of military dictator Augusto Pinochet — had already been the first female president of Chile for eight years in 2014.
By the time her second term ended Bachelet was keeping company with first-time women leaders including Brazil's Dilma Rousseff (2011-2016) and Costa Rica's Laura Chincilla (2010-2014). Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was Argentina's second-ever female president from 2007 to 2015, and the first to be directly elected.?
It was the culmination of a rising tide of leadership among female Latina politicians that began in the mid-2000s and was viewed as a sign of progress against a particular brand of patriarchy in the region known as "machismo".
Just like Samoa's Fiame who faced gender-based attacks, Brazil's Roussef (who ultimately lost office in 2016 following corruption scandals) was also the target of misogynistic attacks from opposition figure Jair Bolsonaro who went on to become president from 2019-2023.
The status of women and girls in the region has traditionally been relegated to the sphere of the home or low-paying work and women's reproductive health rights come up against staunchly held religious beliefs of the predominantly Catholic populace.
But the growing influence of women in politics is also influencing these beliefs. Argentina, Colombia, Guyana and Uruguay have all expanded abortion rights and in 2023 Mexico decriminalised the termination of pregnancy.
Advances are not being made everywhere.
Peru's Dina Boluarte was Vice-President when she became the first woman to take over as president after Pedro Castillo was removed from office by Congress in December 2022. Boluarte's time in office has failed to curb concerns about corruption, poor economic performance and condemnation for a crackdown on protesters in which 49 people were killed.
Polls have put Boluarte's approval rating this year at between 5-10 per cent as she clings on to power.
In South Asia, the first female head of state emerges
South Asia underwent a tectonic reshaping when Britain's imperial grasp on the region was shaken off by independence movements in Sri Lanka, India and Pakistan after World War II. The reverberations of those shifts sowed opportunities for change and discord, both of which underlined the rise of female leaders in the region.
Just six years after Bandaranaike, the first woman elected as a head of state anywhere in the world became the prime minister of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1960, the country's far more populous neighbour, India, appointed its first female prime minister, Indira Gandhi, in 1966.
Steeped in political pedigree — Gandhi's husband was a politician, her father Jawaharlal Nehru was India's first prime minister, and her son Rajiv a future Indian PM — Indira Gandhi served three terms as India's prime minister before being assassinated in 1984. Rajiv's Italian-born widow, Sonia, has remained an influential figure in Indian politics.
A similar story emerged in Pakistan, India's western neighbour, where themes of family power saw Benazir Bhutto follow her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, into politics. She became the first female leader of a Muslim-majority nation in 1988.?
The family's political successes were also marked by violence. Bhutto's father was executed under martial law and Bhutto herself, twice exiled, was assassinated in 2007 when her motorcade was attacked.?
In more recent times, Bandaranaike's daughter, Chandrika Kumaratunga, served as both Sri Lanka's prime minister and in 1994 became the nation's first female president. Kumaratunga served two six-year terms ending in 2005.
India's female president Droupadi Murmu is the first tribal Indian to hold the largely ceremonial office after winning the vote of state and federal lawmakers in 2022.
"A daughter of India hailing from a tribal community born in a remote part of eastern India has been elected our President!" Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on social media.
Kamala Harris, the granddaughter of a villager from southern India, is drawing just as much excitement from the state of Tamil Nadu where she's been proclaimed a "daughter of the land" despite never visiting Thulasendrapuram.
In Africa, an 'iron lady' carves a path for others?
"If we truly seek a peaceful and just world, we must systemically enhance women's access to, and participation in, decision-making processes."
A woman of her word, Nobel laureate Ellen Johnson Sirleaf overturned decades of war, corruption and devastation in Liberia when she was inaugurated in 2006 as the first woman to be elected as head of state of any country in Africa. She led the country until 2018 through 2014's deadly Ebola outbreak which killed almost 5,000 people.?
Africa, a continent where life expectancy, governance, income and education fill the bottom tiers of global rankings, is the region where an "iron lady" has carved a path for others to follow.
Among them, Samia Suluhu Hassan, Tanzania's first female president since 2021, and Sahle-Work Zewde, who was Ethiopia's first female president from 2018 to 2024.
In North America, is it time?
After smashing the "glass ceiling", where to next??
While there is a far from even worldwide distribution of power between the genders, female political leaders have influenced the smallest of nations in the Pacific to the corridors of power in Washington DC.
And while voter polls in the US election suggest the outcome remains on a knife edge, a recent survey of 2,000 young voters in key battleground states found more than 80 per cent believe a woman could be an effective president and strong leader and 68 per cent agreed the US was ready for a female leader.?
Back in 1937, a similar question found only 33 per cent believed a woman could lead America.?
Whether the time has indeed come for the United States to elect a female leader is yet to be decided. As voting officially begins across the country, the world does not have to wait long to find out.?
