The 24 countries where female politicians have the most power

Every year, the World Economic Forum releases its annual Global Gender Gap index , which ranked the gap between the genders in categories ranging from economic power to educational equality.

The report shows that the gap between men and women is narrowing more slowly than hoped, but also includes some fascinating insights into the role of women in societies around the world.

One of the measures of equality used by the WEF is political equality between the sexes. To measure political equality, the WEF took three separate measures; the number of women in a country's parliament, the number of female ministers, and the number of years since 1965 that a woman has been head of state.

The three measures were then collated and each country given an individual score out of one.

Many of the countries at the top of the rankings are forward thinking western democracies, but some countries are a little more surprising. Check them out below.