FIRST Minister Nicola Sturgeon has been named as the UK’s most influential woman according to a new study.

The new study by The Body Shop has placed Nicola Sturgeon in 20th place in a list of the world’s most influential woman seeing off the likes of the Queen and movie stars such as Angelina Jolie and Reese Witherspoon as well as climate youth activist Greta Thunberg, our sister title The Herald reported.

She also placed 2nd as most influential female politician in the world with only Vice President of the United States Kamala Harris beating her to the top spot.

However, the Scottish First Minister's 20th place ranking means she is the highest placed person from the UK on the list.

The study looked at the number of searches each person has generated over the last year, how many followers they have across social media, the number of GIFs there are of each woman and finally the number of Wikipedia page views.

The Body Shop said: “First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon comes top with a staggering 5.2m Google searches from the UK alone.

“Queen Elizabeth II is the second most searched for influential woman with a total of 1.1m UK searches.

"Third position goes to British actress and screenwriter Michaela Coel who received over 750,000 UK searches.”

Woman from Media and Entertainment dominated the top 10 with the only exception being Kamala Harris, but the First Minister was the only name from the UK placed in the top 20.

As well as amounting 5.2m google searches in 2020, she also had more than 900,000 Wikipedia page views and passed a social following of 1.5m.

The Body shop added: “It’s both positive and encouraging to see a variety of women from different professions achieving such high popularity through Google searches and inspiring the next generation of influential women

“As a brand we are inspired by women every day and strive to serve women through self-love, both in our products and messaging."