female leaders

Over the past couple weeks I have heard news about women being elected as leaders of countries. The African country of Liberia elected the first ever female president on the African Continent recently, Germany elected its first female Chancellor in Angela Merkel . I have constantly heard how Hillary Clinton and Condi Rice may run for President in 2008. So I tried to look at what countries have had female leaders and what countries have not. One of the biggest surprises to lot of people may be that the 2 most populated Muslim (http://www.aneki.com/muslim.html) counties of Indonesia and Pakistan have had female leaders (look below) while the US hasn’t. Here are some prominent countries with female leaders now or in the past.
UK – Margaret Thatcher. (You can also include some prominent Queens in power through history including Queen Elisabeth now, Victoria in the 19th century and Elisabeth in the 16th century)
India - Indira Ghandi
Israel – Golda Meir
Pakistan - Benazir Bhutto
Indonesia - Megawati Sukarnoputri
Philippines - Corazon_Aquino

It's just interesting how countries not exactly knows for women’s rights have had female leaders while many countries that you think of being very modern with women’s rights (US being most prominent, but others such as Canada, France, Italy, Japan) never had. This may change in 2008, but it’s hard for people to believe that Pakistan a country that basically founded the Taliban (one of the most suppressive regimes in terms of women’s rights) and where many high level Al-Queda leaders still hide, beat most western countries to having a female leader.