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From Germany to the Philippines and Liberia to Chile, a new generation of women is staking its hold on political power -- and in the words of French presidential consort Bernadette Chirac, men had better get used to it.
As the world Wednesday marks International Women's Day, increasing numbers of women are rising up the greasy pole, although men still dominate political life.
"In future there will be more and more women giving orders to men. That may be tough on them, but that's the way it is," Chirac said last month.
"Women's time has come," she said in paying unexpected tribute to Segolene Royal, the frontrunner for the opposition Socialist nomination in next year's presidential election.
Some women are already there, although not in great numbers.
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was sworn in as Liberian president in January, making her Africa's first elected head of state.
The same month, Michelle Bachelet won Chile's presidential elections -- she will be sworn in this weekend -- and promptly unveiled a cabinet comprised of an equal number of men and women.
In Europe, the last few months have seen Angela Merkel emerge as Germany's first female chancellor and Tarja Halonen re-elected as president of Finland, while women already hold the presidencies in Ireland and Latvia.
Elected women leaders, in fact, have played an important role on the world stage for more than a quarter-century -- including such iron-fisted figures as Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi and Britain's Margaret Thatcher.
In Asia, several strong women leaders have emerged in the past five years: President Gloria Arroyo of the Philippines; Begum Khaleda Zia, who was elected prime minister of Muslim-majority Bangladesh for a second time in 2001; Prime Minister Helen Clark of New Zealand, in power since 1999.
Africa currently has two female prime ministers: Maria do Carmo Silveira of Sao Tome et Principe and Luisa Diogo of Mozambique.
And in the United States, both the opposition Democrat Senator Hillary Clinton and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are seen as strong possible contenders to replace President George W. Bush at the end of his second and final term.
First Lady Laura Bush, in fact, has said she expects to see a woman winning the White House within the next decade.
She paid tribute to Sirleaf as "a shining example for all of us, for women around the world."
Other countries to have had female prime ministers include France, Ukraine, Canada and Pakistan.
But while women may be staking some claims, worldwide they remain severely under-represented in parliaments, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, based in Geneva.
Women make up an average 16.6 percent of lawmakers in parliament, a figure which conceals huge regional disparities -- 40 percent in Scandinavian nations but just 7.8 percent in Arab assemblies.
Those figures are rising, says the IPU, with the overall percentage up from 11.5 percent a decade ago.
Other advances include the all-male parliament in Kuwait last year granting women full political rights -- indicative, said the IPU, of "an embryonic but largely positive trend" in the Arab world.
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AFP 072011 GMT 03 06
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