Women are increasingly entering ministerial positions around the world. Yet, do they look like men on observable background characteristics, such as education or prior occupation? Prior research focusing on women in lower-level politics show that female politicians face a premium, meaning that they need to compensate for discrimination by having higher qualifications than men. We investigate this phenomenon using the novel Paths to Power dataset, which provides detailed individual-level data on nearly 45,000 cabinet members across 137 countries from 1966 to 2021. We show that female ministers used to have better qualifications than men up to the 90ies but that the gap has decreased in later years. This finding might indicate a decreasing level of screening discrimination against women over time, meaning that women increasingly are seen as equal to men in politics even in the highest political positions.