1997 -

Mary Patricia McAleese (Irish: Máire Pádraigín Bean Mhic Ghiolla �osa[1]; born 27 June 1951) is the eighth, and current President of Ireland. She is Ireland's second female president and the world's first woman to succeed another woman as an elected head of state. She was first elected president in 1997 and was re-elected, without contest, to another seven-year term in 2004. McAleese was born in Belfast in Northern Ireland and prior to becoming president she was a barrister, journalist and academic.

2005 -

Angela Dorothea Merkel (born Angela Dorothea Kasner, 17 July 1954, in Hamburg, West Germany), is the Chancellor of Germany. Merkel, elected to the German Parliament from Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, has been the chairwoman of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) since 9 April 2000, and Chairwoman of the CDU-CSU parliamentary party group from 2002 to 2005. She leads a Grand coalition with its sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), and with the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), formed after the 2005 federal election on 22 November 2005.

In 2007, Merkel was also President of the European Council and chair of the G8. She played a central role in the negotiation of the Treaty of Lisbon and the Berlin Declaration. In domestic policy, health care reform and problems concerning future energy development have thus far been the major issues of her tenure.

Merkel is the first female Chancellor of Germany. She is considered by Forbes Magazine to be the "most powerful woman in the world at the present time". In 2007 she became the second woman to chair the G8 after Margaret Thatcher.

In 2008 Merkel received the Charlemagne Prize "for her work to reform the European Union": the prize was presented by Nicolas Sarkozy.

2006 -

Verónica Michelle Bachelet Jeria (born September 29, 1951) is a center-left politician and the current President of Chile—the first woman to hold this position in the country's history. She won the 2006 presidential election in a runoff, beating center-right billionaire businessman and former senator Sebastián Piñera, with 53.5% of the vote. A moderate Socialist, she campaigned on a platform of continuing Chile's free market policies, while increasing social benefits to help reduce the country's gap between rich and poor, one of the largest in the world. She was inaugurated on March 11, 2006.

Bachelet—a surgeon, pediatrician and epidemiologist with studies in military strategy—served as Health Minister and Defense Minister under President Ricardo Lagos. She is a separated mother of three and a self-described agnostic. A polyglot, she speaks Spanish, English, German, Portuguese and French. In 2008, Forbes magazine ranked her as 25th in the list of the 100 most powerful women in the world (she was #27 in 2007, and #17 in 2006). In 2008, TIME magazine ranked her 15 on its list of the world's 100 most influential people.

2006 -

Portia Lucretia Simpson-Miller, ON, MP (born 12 December 1945 in Wood Hall, St. Catherine Parish) is Jamaica's Leader of the Opposition and was the country's Prime Minister from 30 March 2006 to 11 September 2007. She was Jamaica's first female Prime Minister.

1999-

Helen Elizabeth Clark (born 26 February 1950) is the 37th and current Prime Minister of New Zealand. She is New Zealand's second female Prime Minister and has been in office since December 1999, entering her third successive term in 2005. In 2005 Forbes magazine ranked her as the 24th most powerful woman in the world, although lower subsequently.

2000 -

Tarja Kaarina Halonen (born 24 December 1943) is the current President of Finland. She began her first six-year term of office in 2000 and was re-elected on January 29, 2006. Her current term expires in 2012. She is the first woman to hold the office. Halonen married her long term partner, Dr. Pentti Arajärvi, after she was elected President for the first term.

1999 -

2001 - 2007

Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga (also known as Vaira Vikis-Freibergs; born December 1, 1937 in Riga, Latvia) was the 6th President of Latvia and first female President of Latvia. She was elected President of Latvia in 1999 and reelected in 2003. She has been succeeded by Valdis Zatlers, who was elected President of Latvia on 31 May 2007.

2004 - 2006

Luísa Dias Diogo (born April 11, 1958) has been prime minister of Mozambique since February 2004. She replaced Pascoal Mocumbi, who had been prime minister for the previous nine years. Before becoming prime minister she was minister of planning and finance, and she continued to hold that post until February 2005.[2] She is the first woman prime minister of Mozambique. Luisa Diogo represents the party FRELIMO, which has ruled the country since independence in 1975.

2006 -

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (born October 29, 1938) is the current President of Liberia. She served as Minister of Finance under President William Tolbert from 1979 until the 1980 coup d'état, after which she left Liberia and held senior positions at various financial institutions. She placed a distant second in the 1997 presidential election. Later, she was elected President in the 2005 presidential election and took office on January 16, 2006. Johnson-Sirleaf is often referred to as the "Iron Lady", and she is Africa's first elected female head of state. She has pledged to embark neoliberal reforms.