Top 25 Rankings as of September 23 2011
Rank	Change	Team	Points

}
|align=right|1
| align="center" rowspan=7| || || align="center"|2151
|-
|align=right|2
| || align="center"|2146
|-
|align=right|3
| || align="center"|2121
|-
|align=right|4
| || align="center"|2106
|-
|align=right|5
| || align="center"|2085
|-
|align=right|6
| || align="center"|1985
|-
|align=right|7
| || align="center"|1982
|-
|align=right|8
| align="center" |4 || || align="center"|1967
|-
|align=right|9
| align="center" rowspan=2|2 || || align="center"|1964
|-
|align=right|10
| || align="center"|1956
|-
|align=right|11
| align="center" | || || align="center"|1930
|-
|align=right|12
| align="center" |2 || || align="center"|1928
|-
|align=right|13
| align="center" | || || align="center"|1897
|-
|align=right|14
| align="center" |1 || || align="center"|1888
|-
|align=right|15
| align="center" |2 || || align="center"|1860
|-
|align=right|16
| align="center" | || || align="center"|1845
|-
|align=right|17
| align="center" |2 || || align="center"|1831
|-
|align=right|18
| align="center" rowspan=7| || || align="center"|1819
|-
|align=right|19
| || align="center"|1813
|-
|align=right|20
| || align="center"|1802
|-
|align=right|21
| || align="center"|1801
|-
|align=right|22
| || align="center"|1792
|-
|align=right|23
| || align="center"|1772
|-
|align=right|24
| || align="center"|1752
|-
|align=right|25
| align="center" |1 || || align="center"|1730
|}

The FIFA

FIFA

The Fédération Internationale de Football Association , commonly known by the acronym FIFA , is the international governing body of :association football, futsal and beach football. Its headquarters are located in Zurich, Switzerland, and its president is Sepp Blatter, who is in his fourth...

 Women's World Rankings for football

Football (soccer)

Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a sport played between two teams of eleven players with a spherical ball...

 were introduced in 2003, with the first rankings published in March of that year, as a follow-on to the existing FIFA World Rankings

FIFA World Rankings

The FIFA World Rankings is a ranking system for men's national teams in association football, currently led by Spain. The teams of the member nations of FIFA , football's world governing body, are ranked based on their game results with the most successful teams being ranked highest...

 for men. FIFA Women's World Rankings attempt to compare the strength of internationally active teams at any given time.

Specifics of the ranking system

• FIFA Women's World Rankings are based on every international match a team ever played, going back to 1971, the first FIFA-recognized women's international between France
  France women's national football team
  The French women's national football team represents France in international women's football. The team is directed by the French Football Federation and competes as a member of UEFA in various international football tournaments such as the FIFA Women's World Cup, UEFA Women's Euro, the Summer...
  
   and the Netherlands
  Netherlands women's national football team
  The Netherlands women's national football team represents the Netherlands in international women's football. The team played the first women's international recognized by FIFA, on 17 April 1971 against France.-World Cup record:-Current squad:...
  
  . (The men's ranking system considers only matches in the last four years.)
• FIFA Women's World Rankings are implicitly weighted to emphasize recent results. (The men's results are explicitly weighted on a sliding scale.)
• FIFA Women's World Rankings are only published four times a year. Normally, rankings come out in March, June, September and December. (In World Cup
  FIFA Women's World Cup
  The FIFA Women's World Cup is an international association football competition contested by the senior women's national teams of the members of Fédération Internationale de Football Association , the sport's global governing body. The championship has been awarded every four years since the...
  
   years, dates may be adjusted to reflect the World Cup results.)

The first two points result in a FIFA Women's World Rankings system which is far more similar to the Elo football rating system; ratings for teams with fewer than 30 matches should be considered provisional.

Leaders