CEM REPORT, HUMANITARIAN | For the first time ever, there are women MPs in every single country on Earth, the Interparliamentary Union, IPU, said on Friday.
In its latest annual report, the global body dedicated to promoting peace through parliamentary diplomacy and dialogue, also said that women’s participation has never been as diverse as it is in many countries today.
According to UN, the findings are based on data from the 47 countries that held elections last year.
These polls saw women take an average of 25.8 per cent of the seats available, representing a 2.3 percentage point increase, since elections were last held.
It has been a long precarious drive to the attainment of the current paradigm where there seems to be a cautious inclusiveness in some political climes. The progress is observed across regions as presented in a chart of the top ten countries and their share of women in lower houses of parliament between January 1998 and January 2023.
The highest in this category was Sweden with 40.4% in 1998, followed by Norway and finland with 36.4% and 33.5% respectively. The least were the African countries in the top ten; South Africa with 25% and Mozambique with 25.2%.
A striking landmark in the progress made according data presented by IPU is that an African country, Rwanda now tops the list of countries with highest percentage of women in parliament. In a continent considered as hostile to women participation in politics, Rwanda has 61.3% of its parliamentary seats occupied by women.
Other African Countries African countries in the top ten list are South Africa and Senegal. Women make up 46.3% of South African parliament while for Senegal, it is 46.1%
Despite this positive data, IPU noted that it is nonetheless the smallest increase in women’s participation in six years. The 0.4 per cent rise means that the global share of women in parliamentary office, stood at 26.5 per cent, as the New Year dawned.
The other bad news is that at this rate, it will take another 80 years to reach gender parity in parliament, said Martin Chungong, IPU Secretary General:
“Currently, one of the foremost obstacles, is the climate of sexism, harassment, violence against women that we are witnessing across the world”, he said.
“It is a phenomenon that is pervasive across the world and it is not endemic to any particular region. And we can estimate that this is having a toll on the participation of women in political life.”
The IPU chief referred to the resignations of New Zealand and Scotland premiers Jacinda Ardern and Nicola Sturgeon, saying that it was widely held that they had stepped down after being harassed.
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Mr. Chungong also pointed to other IPU data showing pervasive and increasing trend of harassment, sexism and violence against women, that deters them from participating in the political processes in their countries.
Lesia Vasylenko, President of the IPU Bureau of Women MPs, said that every woman elected, “brings parliaments one step closer to becoming more inclusive and representative and it’s great to see much more diversity”.
But overall, she added, “progress is far too slow with half the world’s population still vastly under-represented. There is an urgent need to change this, to strengthen democracy everywhere.”
The President of the IPU, Duarte Pacheco, called on male colleagues in every parliament worldwide, “to work with their female counterparts to move forward and accelerate the pace of change.”
Some highlights
There were encouraging signs that progress is at least happening. Brazil saw a record 4,829 women who identify as Black, running for election, out of nearly 27,000 standing overall.
In the USA, a record 263 women of colour stood in the Congressional Midterms. And LGBTQI+ representation in Colombia, tripled, from two to six members of the Congress.
In France, 32 candidates from a minority background were elected to the new National Assembly, an all time high of 5.8 per
