Global Survey on Women as National Leaders

Throughout history, politics has been largely a man’s world. The 20th century witnessed significant changes, through women’s suffrage and the emergence of women as leaders of parties and nations, albeit at a slow pace and unevenly across the globe. Today,only a handful of countries have had women as political leaders. Just a couple of months ago, a woman candidate fell just short of becoming the USA’s first female President.

The absence of women as national leaders is an undisputed reality, but what lies behind this? How much of it can be attributed to political systems and institutional barriers, and how much is due to culture and public opinion?

The survey was conducted online in each of the 60 countries, using RIWI Corp.’s proprietary RDIT platform that makes it possible to conduct surveys with general populations through laptops and smartphones, without reliance on recruited online panels (see further details). A total of 62,918 surveys were completed (approximately 1,000 in each country) between November 4 and December 10, 2016. The margin of sampling error for each country will be plus or minus 3.0 percentage points, in 19 out of 20 samples.

The survey was conducted in partnership with Environics Communications and Environics Analytics (two leading marketing and communications companies that are part of the commercial Environics Groups of Companies).