To mark International Women's Day, an IoS survey shows progress is being made. Women are capturing an increasing number of seats in parliaments around the world, an Independent on Sunday survey to mark International Women's Day has found. In places such as South Africa and Iceland, they are approaching parity with men, and in one country, Rwanda, they are actually in the majority.
While much remains to be done, not least in the UK where barely one in four MPs are women, governance experts this weekend hailed the advances that many countries have made, including some of the world's least developed nations.
Not that progress has been easy: even in the Nordic countries, where female representation in politics is at least twice as high as elsewhere, victory has been a long time coming. Nan Sloane, director of the Centre for Women and Democracy (CFWD), said yesterday: "The Scandinavian countries have been working at it for decades. They decided a long time ago that this was important, and then dealt with it."
Sweden, Finland, Norway and Iceland all rank in the top 10, with Denmark just outside it. Other notable examples include Cuba, Belgium, Mozambique and Angola. By way of contrast, the UK comes in at a lowly 53rd place, tied with Uzbekistan, Eritrea and the Czech Republic, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, which represents parliaments around the world.
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