42. Park Geun-hye

Title: President of South Korea

Country: South Korea

Age: 63

South Korean President Park Geun-hye is the first female leader of her country — an especially impressive accomplishment considering South Korea has the highest level of gender inequality in the developed world. Her election generated the nation’s highest turnout rate in 15 years.

Park has the difficult but critical responsibility of diffusing threats from the ever-combative North Korea. Last year, she tried to get her mercurial neighbors to the north to abandon their nuclear-weapons program by promising humanitarian aid and an investment in its weak industries, but to no avail. Park has flexed her muscles by testing missiles that can reach all of North Korea, but Kim Jong-un hasn't blinked, and hasn't quashed any nuclear ambitions.