First female heads of state (PHOTOS)

Yingluck Shinawatra and her Puea Thai (For Thais) party won a clear majority Sunday, paving the way for the 44-year-old business executive to become Thailand's first woman prime minister.

Here's a look back at the first female heads of state in other parts of the world, from Sriramavo Bandarnaike, the first woman Prime Minister in Sri Lanka in 1960, to the most recently elected Dilma Rousseff in Brazil this January.

Editor's note: A caption in this gallery was updated to reflect the fact that the 1961 conference of unaligned countries took place in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, not Belgrade, Serbia.