Dhaka, Aug 11 (IANS) Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has been named the seventh among 12 top world women leaders by Time magazine.


The top 12 women leaders are: Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed, Iceland Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir, Costa Rica President Laura Chinchilla, Finland President Tarja Halonen, Lithuania President Dalia Grybauskaite, and Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar.

Quoting Time magazine, the Daily Star said 63-year-old Sheikh Hasina, leader of the Awami League, has a history of surviving.

In 1975, assassins killed 17 members of her family - including three brothers, mother and father, the then president Sheik Mujibur Rahman.

Hasina, then 28, happened to be abroad at the time. She survived a grenade attack that killed more than 20 people a few years back.

Hasina was first elected prime minister in 1996. She was ousted in the 2001 elections, after Transparency International named Bangladesh as the most corrupt country in the world, Time said.

In January 2009, the Awami League won 230 of 299 parliamentary seats, and Hasina became the prime minister again.