Madame Head of State: Women Rising to Political Power Across the Globe

One year before what could be the most important election in American history, the people of the United States of America are faced with the real possibility their next leader, and the next leader of the world's only superpower, may very well be a woman.

A woman in charge is not necessarily a new concept to our nation; 20 States have elected women governors, including large states like Texas and New Jersey. Numerous large American cities such as Chicago, Houston, San Francisco, Washington D.C., Dallas, Kansas City and Atlanta have all elected women mayors. Women have been at the helm of powerful companies, including Hewlett Packard and Kraft Foods, but a woman at the head of everything, sitting in the Oval Office with the title "Commander-in-Chief?" The closest Americans ever got to having a woman in the White House was in 1984, when New York Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro was chosen as the running mate of Former Vice President Walter Mondale, the Mondale/Ferraro ticket was soundly defeated that year by Ronald Reagan, carrying only the state of Minnesota. In 2000, former Secretary of Labor and current North Carolina Senator Elizabeth Dole made a short-lived run for the GOP Presidential nomination, but dropped out even before the primaries. It wasn't until 2007, when Nancy Pelosi became Speaker of the House of Representatives, that a woman became head of a branch of the federal government.

A recent poll shows a decent majority of Americans say the United States is ready for a woman president, but when you really dig into the psyche of Americans, you may very well find strong doubts that a woman can follow in the footsteps of the forty-three men who came before her. Is it the right time? Will our enemies take her seriously? Can she be strong and decisive? Perhaps it's our relatively short male-dominated political history that makes us reprehensible, but around the world, women have long shown themselves to be strong and highly effective leaders, and like some of their male counterparts, others have shown themselves to be complete flops.