NOW THAT TWO of the world’s five biggest economies — Germany and Britain — are headed by women and the biggest one of all, the US, has a woman front-runner in its presidential election, the glass ceiling in politics can probably be declared broken and it’s time to consider what kind of change this brings to the world.

The overall statistics of female leadership do not look particularly encouraging. There are fewer women heads of government today than there were last year. Not even five percent of government leaders are women. Yet they are winning where it matters. If there were a way to weight women’s influence by the might of the countries they run, the US, Germany and Britain would swing the balance in their favour. It’s infinitely harder for women to break through to the top in big, fiercely competitive democracies than in smaller countries such as the Nordic and the Baltic states, which have provided most female government leaders in recent years. And it’s doubly hard for a woman to reach high office in a country with a conservative Catholic tradition like Poland — where Beata Szydlo is currently prime minister. Besides, in a number of other powerful nations, women are important opposition figures or strategically placed one day to take over the leadership of governing parties.

Adding to the collective clout of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister Theresa May and, potentially, Hillary Clinton, some important nations that aren’t run by women have women strategically placed one day to take over the leadership of governing parties or win high office as strong opposition figures.