First Ladies, in The Truest Sense; The record for female representation is held by Rwanda, with women making up 49 percent of its lower house. The United States ranks 67th.

Publication: Newsweek

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Byline: Fareed Zakaria (Write the author at comments@fareedzakaria.com.)

Sometimes the most important stories in the world don't get much attention because they're powerful but slow trends that can't be easily covered. They provide no single great event for cameras to focus on, nor a powerful image everyone can easily grasp. (How do you televise globalization?) Last week, however, something happened that gives us a rare opportunity to look at one such trend. On Nov. 8, Liberians elected the Harvard-educated Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, 67, to be their next leader. This is newsworthy by itself because Johnson-Sirleaf will be Africa's first female president. But it's an even bigger story because, on the world stage, it's not an isolated event. One of the quiet, underreported tidal waves of the past decade has been the rise...

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