She was the world's first female prime minister when she became Prime Minister of Sri Lanka then the Dominion of Ceylon in Born into a Sinhalese Kandyan aristocratic family, Bandaranaike was educated in Catholic, English-medium schools , but remained a Buddhist and spoke Sinhala as well as English. On graduating from secondary school, she worked for various social programmes before marrying and raising a family. Playing hostess to her husband S. Bandaranaike , who founded the socialist SLFP in and became prime minister in , she gained his trust as an informal advisor.
Her social work focused on improving the lives of women and girls in rural areas of Sri Lanka. Following her husband's assassination in , Bandaranaike was soon persuaded by the party leadership during a brief time in opposition to join active politics and succeed her husband as chairwoman; she returned her party to the government and defeated prime minister Dudley Senanayake 's UNP in the July election.
She was then unseated by Senanayake in the election and became Leader of the Opposition , before winning a large majority in due to a cleverly structured election alliance with rival Marxist parties.
Bandaranaike attempted to reform the former Dominion of Ceylon into a socialist republic by nationalising organisations in the banking, education, industry, media and trade sectors. Changing the administrative language from English to Sinhala and routinely campaigning on Sinhalese nationalist and anti-Tamil policies, which was political mainstream, she exacerbated discontent among the native Tamil population, and with the estate Tamils , who had become stateless under the Citizenship Act of During Bandaranaike's first two terms as prime minister, the country was plagued by high inflation and taxes, a dependence on food imports to feed the populace, high unemployment, and polarisation between the Sinhalese and Tamil populations because of her Sinhalese nationalist policies.
In , Bandaranaike created what would eventually become the Sri Lankan Ministry of Women and Child Affairs , also appointing the first woman to serve in the Sri Lankan Cabinet aside from herself.
