Women in politics

What a prejudicial article. Daughters? What about sons? Why is it unremarkable for junior to follow dad into public service, and evidence of incompetence for daughters to follow mom or dad into public office?

Is there anyone who thinks that Dubya (Bush 43) would have become president had his father not been president? And actually, Bush 41 was himself the son of a senator from Connecticut, who was the son of a close advisor to Herbert Hoover.

Had the Economist made the same chart for sons, they would not have been able to represent the data on one page, or with one line of relationship.

Such a cheap shot.

Hey Economist, Cristina Fernandez is a widow, not a wife. Nestor died some time ago.

List is concerned about only national level leaders(Presidents or Prime Ministers or equally powerful).

If we go to second level leaders - entries from india would be

Agatha Sangma (d/o PA Sangma)
Supriya Sule (d/o Sharad Pawar)
Rabadi Devi (wife of Lalu Yadav)
etc... can you add more?

Of course, this is not meant to be a representative sample of female leaders, by definition it is female leaders with relations who were leaders. So just because there are 20 or so women here, doesn't mean anything because we don't have an equivalent list of females who are not related to former leaders.

Two posthumous notables are of course Indira Ghandi & Benazir Bhutto, daughters & PMs of erstwhile PMs of India & Pakistan respectively.

I guess women in power are a force to reckon with, just as much as alfa males holding the reigns - without the bravado & machismo, thankfully!

The article Wives and Daughters of powerful men is an interesting one i wounder if your research indicaed that what the men have achieved was by support of thier wives or daughter being restricted simply for being a woman, and they are fulfilling their wives or daughters ambitions.

Some people would have included founding Indonesian President Sukarno's daughter Sukarnoputri (? ) in a list like this . I'm sure there are ( the usual ) excellent reasons why she is not so included

Isn't the word "females" offensive??

It is quite interesting piece of statistics. Women in the last century and now have truly emerged quite powerful and have risen to top positions in the political ladder. They can really change the political ambience provided they have the will and passion. They should not commit the same blunder of men embezzling huge money of the tresury depriving the poor and downtrodden the benefit of exchequer resources to enhance thier living standards. Prof Venkateswaran. B. Chennai, India

As far as Bangladesh is concerned, the politics here is dominated by Sheikh Mujib and Ziaur Rahman family. Nation are indebted to both these leaders who had been killed under tragic circumstances. The enmity between two families are so deep rooted, country has become hostage to them. Many wish if those two representatives were not in the scene. They proved to be constant constraint in the journey to progress.

Sir Harold,

I think then we have to add people like Eleanor Roosevelt and so on.

As the subtitle of the chart says, it is concerned with "current female leaders."

There is a glaring ommision, possibly because of your white centered view of the world.

You left out Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaiake of Sri Lanka, the world's first woman prime minister. Subsequently her daughter Chandrika Bandaranaike, was elected President. Thus the Bandaranaiake family gave two Prime Ministers (Mr. Bandaranaike and Mrs. Bandaranaike) and one President to Sri Lanka.

Just what does one mean by "leader"?

Can some neophytes who are made to hold power by proxy or inherit leadership direct from father/husband/brother/grandfather be considered "leaders"?

This chart can be rather obfuscating. (vzc1943)

What about Her Majesty, the Queen of England? The UK is only now to soon have its first King in nearly a century.

Perhaps for ages now, women have been direct lineal descendants of powerful men, but never has history recorded any single powerful woman taking hold of planet Earth.

I don't recall learning any great female leader in my history lessons, and neither can I remember reading about any.

Only this century has seen the rise of a true democracy, and as history has it, women have always had more of the "democratic" attributes

The article correctly mentions
"Perhaps women are thought best able to soften an authoritarian family brand, and make it more acceptable in a democracy."

I could only imagine seeing a woman in the position of Adolf Hitler or Muammar Gaddafi or Benito Mussolini.

Relationships of women with powerful men has always been constant, what's not been constant is seeing those related women rise up to power.

Behind every successful woman, there is a man.

To be fair, if not for nepotism, we'd have even fewer women in leadership positions around the world. So I guess two cheers and a jeer for gender equality by lowly means!

It might be equally interesting to look at brothers and sons. For that matter, how about looking at men whose wives were in office first.

It's still nepotism either way -- albeit weakly, for those elected (initially largely on name recognition in most cases) rather than appointed), either way.

cristina crikner is widow, no wives

And since we've got this going, just out of curiosity, of all those women mentioned above, who do you think would rank to be the hottest?

This might be irrelevant, but answer it if you want to.
If you don't want to, quit bashing others and just move on.