DHAKA: Awami League President and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is classed one of top 10 female leaders of the present world.

The list of rankings has been published by The Time magazine in its “Time Special” segment with Sheikh Hasina placed on the 6th rung among top 10 female leaders in the world currently.

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard — the nation`s first female PM--tops the leadership list followed by Johanna Sigurdardottir, Prime Minister of Iceland.

The report states that Sheikh Hasina, the 62-year-old leader of the left-of-center Awami League, has a history of stoical surviving. During a 1975 coup d`état, assassins killed 17 members of her family — including her three brothers, mother, relatives and father, former Prime Minister Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Sheikh Hasina, then 28, happened to be abroad at the time.

She later survived a grenade attack that killed more than 24 people, dodging the bullets that sprayed her car as she fled. Sheikh Hasina was first elected Prime Minister in 1996.

But in 2001, Sheikh Hasina was ousted in a landslide. That wasn`t the end of her, though. In January 2009, the Awami League won 230 of 300 parliamentary seats, and the consummate survivor found herself Prime Minister again.

BDST 1835 HRS, AUGUST 30, 2010.