Morocco’s Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri has become the country’s first woman Head of Government after King Mohammed VI appointed her on 29 September, following her Authenticity and Modernity Party’s victory in the parliamentary elections. A lawyer by training and former Mayor of Marrakesh, El Mansouri becomes only the third woman to head a government in the Arab world, after Tunisia’s Najla Bouden and Sarra Zaafrani Zenzri. Her appointment marks a significant moment for women’s political representation in the Arab and wider Muslim world, where women have reached the highest levels of government in only a small number of countries. El Mansouri, 50, has already broken political ground as Marrakesh’s first woman mayor and as a senior government minister. Her rise to the premiership places Morocco’s experience within a wider, evolving story of women’s participation in political leadership across Muslim-majority societies.