Sirimavo Bandaranaike became prime minister of Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, after her party won the July 1960 general election. She was the first woman in the world to serve as a national head of government in the modern era. Her premiership became a landmark in women's political representation.

Her rise expanded the political possibilities available to women in postcolonial public life. Sri Lankan poets and writers explored the same era's tensions involving independence, language, gender, ethnicity and the unfinished legacies of empire.