In 1916, a 36-year-old woman, Jeannette Pickering Rankin, became the first woman to be elected to the US House of Representatives—at least four years before every woman in the United States could vote. Ninety-two years later, the candidacies of Hillary Rodham Clinton—in the White House race—and Sarah Palin—the Republican VP candidate, were the closest the US came to shattering the glass ceiling. Now with Hillary Clinton replacing Condoleezza Rice as US Secretary of State, she becomes the third woman US Secretary of State (Madeleine Albright was the other.

ASIA

Has had some of the most powerful women heads of state, including Sri Lankan Sirimavo Bandaranaike and Indira Gandhi. India’s Sonia Gandhi is among Newsweek’s 50 most powerful persons and president Pratibha Patil is the country’s first woman president. Bangladesh voted on Monday after about a two-year emergency rule. Former prime ministers Sheikh Hasina and Begum Khaleda Zia are again the front-runners. Phillipines president Gloria Arroyo has been in power since 2001.

Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni is the designated acting prime minister. In September, Livni was elected leader of the Kadima party and tried to form a coalition government, unsuccessfully. Elections are scheduled for February 2009.

AFRICA

In 2006, Liberian president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf became Africa’s first elected female head of state and is often referred to as the ‘Iron Lady of Africa’.

LATIN AMERICA

Gave the world its first woman president in 1974 with Argentina’s Isabel Martínez de Perón. Now has Michelle Bachelet as president of Chile—she is 15th on Time’s list of 100 most influential people—and Cristina Fernández de Kichner as the Argentine president. A February report by the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, released in February 2008, said though the number of Latin American women in politics has grown to 8.5 per cent, real progress is highly uneven. For instance, while one in three parliamentarians is a woman in Argentina , in Brazil, the figure is one in 12.

EUROPE

French President Nicolas Sarkozy appointed 11 women ministers in his cabinet, including the interior and economic ministers. France, which witnessed a riveting fight between Sarkozy and Segolene Royal in the last presidential election, saw another female fight within the Socialist party with Martine Aubry, a former labor minister defeating Royal to head the Socialist party. But what this nail-biting fight didn’t tell you was: i) this country of Joan of Arc and Simone de Beauvoir ranks 72nd worldwide, behind Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan and Togo, in women’s representation in national parliaments and ii) there are fewer women in the National Assembly now than in 1945.

Angela Merkel, the first woman Chancellor of Germany, is considered by Forbes magazine as the “most powerful woman in the world at the present time.” But here’s a sobering reality check: half of Europe’s citizens are women, but only 30 per cent of the members of the European Parliament are women.

Russia’s Valentina Matvienko, the Governor of St Petersburg, has been rated by Forbes as being one of the most influential women politicians of 2008 but women politicians in Russia remain a rarity with only 62 women among 388 men in the Russian Duma.

In Spain, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero unveiled a woman-dominated cabinet in April this year. Nine of his ministers are women—including defence minister Carme Chacon, a rising star in the Socialist Party—and eight men. Italy, too, has a strong women presence, with four women in Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s cabinet, including Mara Carfagna, a former Italian showgirl who is the Minister of Equal Opportunities.

Finnish President Tarja Haolnen has strongly influenced the country’s foreign policy with her opposition to a NATO membership.