TIME magazine considers Iceland’s prime minister, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, to be one of the world’s greatest female leaders, just behind the prime minister of Australia.
The reasons behind TIME’s decision are that Jóhanna has the longest experience in parliament of any other MP, and was for a long time the most popular politician in the country. In addition, she is the first female prime minister of Iceland, and the first national head in the world to be openly gay (a fact that most Icelanders greet with indifference, and that Jóhanna herself doesn’t draw much attention to).
Jóhanna was previously in 74th place in Forbe’s magazine’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women in the World. Most of the women featured were, not surprisingly for Forbe’s, captains of industry, with Angela Merkel being the sole politician to make it into the top ten.