With a record 78 MPs, this election proved that female candidates can win.

Meet some first-timers without any political lineage to find out the odds they conquered on the way to Parliament.

RAMYA HARIDAS| CONGRESS

One hundred years ago - on 4 June 1919 - Congress approved the 19th Amendment to the US constitution guaranteeing the right of American women to vote.

The amendment was the product of decades of campaigning and slow progress since the first convention for women's rights was held in Seneca Falls in 1848.

Cases of brutal murders and attacks of female politicians in recent years have raised the question, is political violence targeting women on the rise?

More women have been elected to the European parliament than ever before but men still account for 60% of MEPs, according to an early analysis of the European election results.

Russian diplomat Tatiana Valovaya has been named the next director-general of the UN office at Geneva, making the former journalist

The newly-elected 17th Lok Sabha set the record with highest number of woman: 78 MPs. However, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet, which was sworn-in on Thursday, in a largest-ever gathering, has only six women ministers in the government.

Three of these six women members of Parliament, only three have made it to PM Modi’s cabinet - Nirmala Sitharaman, Harsimrat Kaur Badal and Smriti Irani.

Breaching a largely male bastion, India's new Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday became the first woman in 48 years since then prime minister Indira Gandhi to hold charge of the key ministry.

Sitharaman, who became the first full-time woman defence minister in the first tenure of the BJP government, will also head the corporate affairs ministry in the new cabinet.