For the first time, the United States is facing the possibility of having a female president after Hillary Clinton’s nomination by the Democratic party. Even if it does happen, America will be late to the history books – 52 countries have already had a female head of government according to the World Economic Forum Gender Gap Report 2015.
In some cases though, those women have only briefly held power. So, the chart above shows the states where women have led for the longest. You can see the full list in table C14 here.
And, you can see more of my datasketches here (examples include circumcision rates, passport ownership by US state and how much pee is a lot of pee).
• This article was amended on 29 July 2016. The wording initially referred to female heads of state (following the wording in the World Economic Forum data) but the statistics seem to refer to female heads of government.
