Factbox: Executions of women in the United States are rare

(Reuters) - Kelly Gissendaner, 47, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection in Georgia on Tuesday in what would be the first execution of a woman in the state in 70 years.

Gissendaner, convicted of plotting her husband's 1997 murder, would be in rare company nationally, as well. Only 15 of the 1,414 people put to death in the United States since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976 were female, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Women make up less than 2 percent of the country's total death row population, said the center, a nonprofit organization that tracks the issue of capital punishment.

The following is a list of some notable U.S. cases of women executed in the United States:

* The most recent execution of a woman was carried out in Texas in September 2014. Lisa Ann Coleman was put to death for the 2004 starving death of a 9-year-old boy.

* Georgia last executed a woman in March 1945, when Lena Baker was killed in the electric chair for murdering her employer. Baker said she acted in self-defense, and Georgia's parole board pardoned her in 2005.

* Margie Velma Barfield's lethal injection in North Carolina in November 1984 marked the first execution of a woman in the United States after capital punishment resumed in 1976. She confessed to several murders but was tried and found guilty of killing only her fiance by poisoning his beer.

* Prostitute Aileen Wuornos, nicknamed the "Damsel of Death," was executed in October 2002 after confessing to murdering seven men she encountered on Florida highways in 1989 and 1990. Actress Charlize Theron won an Oscar for her portrayal of Wuornos in the 2003 movie "Monster."

(Reporting by Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Mohammad Zargham)