List of elected and appointed female state leaders

• Three former sovereign states had a female head of state or government in the 20th century: East Germany, Tannu Tuva and Yugoslavia.

The following is a list of women who have been elected or appointed head of state or government of their respective countries since the interwar period (1918–1939). The first list includes female presidents who are heads of state and may also be heads of government, as well as female heads of government who are not concurrently head of state, such as prime ministers. The list does not include Queens regnant who are heads of state (but not of government).

Khertek Anchimaa, of the mostly unrecognized and now defunct Tuvan People's Republic, is regarded as the "first ever elected woman head of state in the world", although not in multiparty, free and fair elections. The wife of the nation's Supreme Leader, she is the first woman to be elected Chairman of a country. She became the chairwoman of the country's presidium in 1940.

The first woman to be elected as prime minister of a country was Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka), when she led her party to victory in the July 1960 general election.

The first woman to serve as president of a country was Isabel Perón of Argentina, who served as the country's vice president and succeeded to the presidency in July 1974 upon the death of her husband.

The first woman elected president of a country was Vigdís Finnbogadóttir of Iceland, who won the 1980 presidential election as well as three subsequent elections, remaining in office for a total of 16 years, which makes her the longest-serving non-hereditary female head of state in history. Vigdís was also the first woman to win a presidential election where the second place candidate was another woman: she defeated Sigrún Thorsteinsdóttir in the 1988 presidential election.

The first democratically elected female prime minister of a Muslim majority country was Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan, who led her party to victory in the 1988 general election and later in 1993, making her the first woman democratically elected leader of any Muslim nation. Bhutto was also the first of only two non-hereditary female world leaders who gave birth to a child while serving in office, the other being Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand.

The longest-tenured female non-hereditary head of government is Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh. She served as the country's prime minister from June 1996 to July 2001 and again from January 2009 until August 2024, for a combined total of over 20 years.

The prime ministers of Equatorial Guinea, Mozambique, Namibia, Peru, and Uganda are included in the list of elected or appointed female deputy heads of government but not in the list of elected or appointed female deputy heads of state, as they are neither heads of government, nor deputy heads of state due to the existence of the office of vice president in these countries, whereas the prime ministers of South Korea and Sri Lanka (post-1978) are included in both of those lists.

Currently, Iceland and Trinidad and Tobago are the only republics where both the serving head of state and head of government are women. The Marshall Islands, Mexico, Namibia, Suriname, Tanzania, and Venezuela are republics where the female President is the combined head of state and government.