20 Famous Female Leaders on Power in The World

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Kamala Harris is the first South Asian-American black woman to become U.S. vice president on January 20, 2021. Harris is no stranger to the firsts, as in 2016, she was the first African-American woman to be elected to the United States Senate. Similarly, she became California's attorney general. 

Hailing from California, Kamala was born to her parents in Oakland. Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, is from India, and her father, Donald Jasper Harris, is from Jamaica. Shyamala Gopalan, the mother of the U.S. vice president, was a biomedical scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; meanwhile, her father, Donald J. Harris, is an economist and professor emeritus at Stanford University. Kamala has a younger sister, Maya Harris, who is an American lawyer, public policy advocate, and writer.

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Condoleezza Rice is a political scientist who served as the 66th United States secretary of state from 2005 to 2009. She was the first African-American state secretary and the first woman to operate as a national security advisor. As Secretary of State, Rice traveled heavily and initiated many diplomatic efforts on behalf of the Bush administration. She also reformed and restructured the department, and U.S. diplomacy as a whole championed the expansion of democratic governments and other American values. 
Condoleezza Rice was born to Angelena Rice and John Wesley Rice in Birmingham, Alabama. Her mother, Angelena, is a high school science, music, and oratory teacher, and her father, John, is a high school guidance counselor, Presbyterian minister, and dean of students at Stillman College.

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Sandra Day O'Connor is a retired attorney. She served as the first female associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1981 to 2006. Before O'Connor's tenure on the Court, she was a judge and an elected official in Arizona, working as the first female majority leader of the state as the Republican leader in the Arizona Senate.

Born in El Paso, Texas, Sandra's father is Alfred Day, a rancher, and mother Ada Mae and also had a sister, Ann Day, an American politician and psychologist who died at 77 years of age. She has three children with her late husband, John Jay O'Connor, who was an American lawyer.

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg was an American jurist and lawyer. She served as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1993 until she died in 2020. As former American Civil Liberties Union general counsel, she co-founded its Women's Rights Project. On September 18, 2020, at age 87, Ginsburg died from complications of pancreatic cancer.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was born in Brooklyn, New York, to her parents, Celia and Nathan Bader. Her sister, Marylin, died when she was a baby and her mother died shortly before Ginsburg graduated from high school. Former Supreme Court Justice Ruth has two children from her marriage with Martin Ginsburg.

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New Zealand politician Jacinda Ardern has been serving as the 40th prime minister of New Zealand since 2017. As the leader of the Labour Party, Ardern promises an "empathetic" government with ambitious plans to tackle climate change and child poverty.
Jacinda was born in Hamilton and grew up in Morrinsville with her father, Ross Ardern, a police officer, and her mother, Laurell Ardern, a school catering assistant.

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From 1997 to 2001, Madeleine Albright was the 64th United States secretary of state. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1998. She was the second recipient of the Hanno R. Ellenbogen Citizenship Award presented by the Prague Society for International Cooperation. 
When she was 11, Albright immigrated to the United States after the 1948 communist coup d'état with her family. Albright was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Her father, Josef Korbel, was a diplomat. She married Joseph Albright and had three children together before divorcing in 1982. Madeleine died at the age of 84 on March 23, 2022.

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Emmeline Pankhurst was an English political activist best remembered for organizing the U.K. womens right movement and helping them win the right to vote. She then founded the Women's Social and Political Union, an all-women suffrage advocacy organization dedicated to deeds, not words in 1903.
Emmeline Pankhurst married Richard Pankhurst in 1879 and had five children together. Pankhurst died on June 14, 1928, at the age of 69.

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Elizabeth Warren has been a senior United States senator from Massachusetts since 2013. He has focused on consumer protection, economic opportunity, and the social safety net in the Senate.
Warren was born to Pauline Louise, a homemaker, and Donald Jones Herring, a U.S. Army flight instructor during World War II in Oklahoma City. She married Jim Warren in 1968 and got divorced in 1978. Later, she married Bruce H.Mann, Jr., Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.

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In 2007, Nancy Pelosi became the first woman to lead a major political party when she was elected speaker in 2011. In 2019, she regained the position after the Democrats retook the House in the 2018 midterm elections. 
Pelosi was born to her parents, Thomas D'Alessandro Jr. and Annunciata Lombardi, Nancy Patricia D'Alessandro, in Baltimore, Maryland. Her father was an American politician who was a U.S. Representative. Nancy's eldest brother Thomas D'Alessandro III was also an American politician and attorney. She was married to Paul Pelosi, an American businessman, in 1963 and had five children together and resides in San Francisco, California.

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An American politician, registered nurse, and Black Lives Matter activist, Cori Bush serves as the U.S. representative for Missouri's 1st congressional district. Bush is the first African-American woman to serve in Missouri's U.S. House of Representatives. She was featured in the 2019 Netflix documentary Knock Down the House, which covered her first primary challenge to Clay.

Bush was born on July 21, 1976, to her father, Errol Bush, an alderman in Missouri. She is married and has two children.

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Michelle Obama is an American author and attorney. She served as the first lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017, the first African-American woman to serve in this position. After her husband's presidency, Obama's influence has remained high. In 2020, Obama topped Gallup's poll of the most admired woman in America for the third year. 
Michelle Obama was born to Fraser Robinson III and Marian Shields on January 17, 1964. She also has a brother, Craig Robinson, an American college basketball coach. Hailing from Chicago, Illinois, Michelle Obama is the wife of former President Barack Obama. Together they have two children.

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Sonia Sotomayor is the third woman, the first woman of color, and the first Hispanic and Latina to serve as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. She was nominated by President Barack Obama on May 26, 2009, and has served since August 8, 2009. 
Sotomayor was born in The Bronx, New York City, and raised by her mother after her father's death. She married Kevin Noonan in 1976 and got divorced in 1983.

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Sarah McBride is the first openly transgender state senator in the country. She is primarily credited with passing legislation in Delaware banning discrimination based on gender identity in employment, housing, insurance, and public accommodations.
Sarah McBride was born to David, former lawyer Young Conaway Stargatt & Taylor, and Sally McBride, a guidance counselor. She married Andrew Cray, who died in 2014, four days after their wedding due to oral cancer.

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Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani activist for women education and the Youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Her advocacy grew into an international movement, and according to former Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, she has become Pakistan's "most prominent citizen."
Malala was born to Ziauddin Yousafzai and Toor Pekai Yousafzai in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. She is married to Asser Malik.

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Loretta Lynch served as the 83rd attorney general of the U.S from 2015 to 2017. As a U.S. attorney, Lynch oversaw federal prosecutions in Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and Long Island. She became the first African-American woman, the second African-American after Holder, and the second woman, Janet Reno, to hold this office.
Loretta was born at North Carolina to Lorine Lynch, a school librarian, and Lorenzo Lynch, a Baptist minister. In 2007, she got married to Stephen Hargrove and had two stepchildren.

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Finnish politician Sanna Marin has served as Finland's Prime Minister since 2019. Marin was selected as Prime Minister on December 8, 2019, when she was just 34, making her the youngest Prime Minister in the world. She first stepped into the Finnish Parliament in 2015 as a member of the Social Democratic party. Finland native Sanna scored high marks for how she navigated the country during the first wave of Covid-19 in 2020.
Sanna Marin was born in Helsinki, Uusimaa, Finland, to her father, Lauri Marin but when her biological parents separated, she was raised by her biological mother and her mother's female partner. Prime Minister of Finland, Marin, is married to Markus Raikkonen and has a daughter, Emma. She expresses herself as coming from a "rainbow family" as same-sex parents brought her up.

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Taiwanese politician Tsai Ing-Wen is the first unmarried female incumbent President of the Republic of China since 2016. Her leadership during Covid is seen as a global model and instituted a rigorous track and trace program to prevent mass contagion. Tsai Ing-Wen has vowed to make Taiwan an indispensable member of the world by stimulating the economy with biotech, green energy, and defense initiatives.
Tsai Ing-Wen was born in Zhongshan, Taipei, Taiwan, on August 31, 1956, to her father, Tsai Chieh-sheng, a businessman, and her mother, Chang Chin-Fong, a housewife. She has seven elder half-siblings on her father's side and a half-brother on her mother's side.

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Maxine Waters has been the U.S. representative for California's 43rd congressional district since 1991. The most senior of the 12 black women serving in Congress has chaired the Congressional Black Caucus from 1997 to 1999. The outspoken opponent of the Iraq War in Congress has criticized Presidents Barack Obama, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush,  and Donald Trump.
Waters is the daughter of Remus Carr and Velma Lee, born in 1938 in St. Louis, Missouri. Her single mother raised her after her father left the family when Maxine was two.

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Angela Merkel is a retired German politician and scientist who served as the chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021. She was the first female chancellor of Germany. Previously she served as leader of the Opposition from 2002 to 2005. She was also the Leader of the Christian Democratic Union from 2000 to 2018. Merkel was frequently referred to as the de facto leader of the European Union.
Merkel was born in Hamburg to Horst Kasner, a Lutheran pastor, and Herlind, a teacher of English and Latin. She also has two younger siblings, Marcus Kasner and Irene Kasner.

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Melinda French Gates is one of the most important and powerful philanthropists who serves as the co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Melinda and her former husband Bill Gates co-founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000. Even after getting separated, Melinda remains co-chair of the foundation. Philanthropist Melinda expressed her desire to increase diversity in the workplace, especially in the technology industry, saying, "Every company needs technology, and yet we're graduating fewer women technologists. That is not good for society. We have to change it."
Melinda French Gates was born in Dallas, Texas, on August 15, 1964, to an aerospace engineer, Raymond Joseph French Jr., and Elaine Agnes Amerland, a homemaker. She has two younger brothers and an older sister.