COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — The world's first woman prime minister died just minutes after casting her ballot in national elections. She was survived by her daughter, who is president of Sri Lanka, and her son, an opposition leader.
Sirimavo Bandaranaike's death at 84 last week came also on the 60th anniversary of her marriage to another former prime minister, who was murdered in 1959.
Her story is not unique. In South Asia, where women are for the most part treated as second-class citizens, they have often been thrust into power by the slaying of their husbands or fathers, or named as figureheads by male power brokers — but in practice have turned out to be far from pliable.
Similar modern matriarchies exist in neighboring Bangladesh and India, and Pakistan has also had a woman leader.
Women in the subcontinent can be sold into marriage, banished if they fail to produce sons and consigned to spend their lives serving men.
Yet the daughters and wives of many politicians in this region, where political power is often defined along family lines, take over countries when their husbands or fathers fall, even though they have little political or professional experience.
"The people feel that the wife is the best to carry on," Bandaranaike told the Associated Press in an interview in 1988. "They trust the wife to carry on the husband's policies more than anyone else."
Bandaranaike was transformed from shy housewife into a political dynamo after her husband, Prime Minister Solomon Dias Bandaranaike was killed by a deranged Buddhist monk in 1959.
She campaigned for her husband's party and was elected the world's first woman prime minister on July 20, 1960. It was six years before Indira Gandhi became India's first woman leader; nine years before Golda Meir took over in Israel and 19 years before Margaret Thatcher began her three-term premiership of Britain.
Bandaranaike went on to serve as prime minister in this island nation off the southern tip of India for three terms until she stepped down in August. Her daughter, Chandrika Kumaratunga, is Sri Lanka's president.
"People trust women from dynastic families. They have a certain charisma," said Kumari Jayawardena of the Social Scientists Association in Colombo.
Indira Gandhi, daughter of India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was known as the Mother of India. She was loved, hated, feared, respected. She abolished the princely estates of the maharajahs, intervened in Pakistan's civil war to create the new nation of Bangladesh in 1971 and led India into the nuclear age.
Gandhi was installed as prime minister in 1966 by men who thought she would be pliable. She soon proved them wrong and stayed in office for 11 years, but governed with heavy-handed emergency powers for the last 20 months. Voters threw her out when democracy was restored, but she rebounded in 1980 to serve four more years as prime minister until Sikh bodyguards assassinated her.
In neighboring Bangladesh, Sheik Hasina and Khaleda Zia both came to power following family murders.
Hasina's father was the country's first president, Sheik Mujibur Rahman, assassinated in 1975. Her archrival Zia sought a role in politics only after her husband, President Ziaur Rahman, was killed.
Both women were installed by male politicians in need of party leaders who could unite the ranks by invoking memories of once-popular presidents.
But their bitter rivalry is often blamed for the legislative deadlocks and strikes that paralyze one of the world's poorest countries.
Sunila Abeysekera, director of INFORM, a human rights center in Colombo, said women are often thrust into power as figureheads for male power brokers behind the scenes.
"In order to salve the male egos, selecting the widow or daughter of the assassinated leader becomes the way of defusing tension within the party," Abeysekera said.
She doesn't like it.
"Politics in South Asia is quite feudal and the political power still lies in the hands of families," Abeysekera said. "The work of individuals is still not recognized. That's a terrible thing."
In Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto became the first woman leader of a modern Muslim nation when she won office in 1988. Her father, former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was removed from power and hanged by military dictator general Ziaul Haq in the late 1970s. Twice elected prime minister, she now lives in Britain and has been convicted in absentia of corruption. Her male successor, Nawaz Sharif, is also accused of corruption.