It's 2023 and women still have just one in four seats across parliaments, and other stories
It's 2023 and women still have just one in four seats across parliaments, and other stories
#WomenLead (Issue 135): Your weekly round-up on women in politics
Hello, and welcome to Issue 135!
In a befitting tribute to International Women’s Day, we bring you some heartening updates from India and Spain in this week’s edition. We also use the occasion to take a stock-check of where the world stands on women’s representation at the parliamentary level.
In case you missed last week’s edition, you can read it here.
But before we begin, a #Throwback
International Women’s Day is rooted in a history of the fight for equal political and economic rights. Here’s a quick reminder of how we came to celebrate this day. Makes for a good March 8 reading every year!
Quick Updates
⚡DISRUPTION ALERT: It was a historic week in the Indian state of Nagaland where women have been elected to the state legislative assembly for the first time. The state held elections on February 27, and results were declared on March 2. Not one, but two women - Hekani Jakhalu and Salhoutuonuo Kruse - were successful, ending a decades-long shameful run of women’s exclusion from the legislature.
Of course, miles remain to be covered. The share of women is only 3.3 percent. But we are so glad that this glass ceiling iron plate finally has some cracks!
🙌 WAY TO GO: Spain is set to introduce a bill to improve women’s representation in politics, business and other spheres of public life, Reuters has reported.
Women currently make up 42.4 percent of the lower house and 39.3 percent of the upper house of Parliament, and the country ranks 22nd on the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s rankings of countries based on the share of women in parliament.
With the new law, parties would be required to put forth an equal share of men and women as candidates during elections, and this will be applicable across elections - from local levels to elections for the European Parliament.
Announcing this decision during a party rally, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said that with the proposed law, the government was "not only taking a step in favour of feminism, but in favour of Spanish society as a whole". Our eyes and hearts are very pleased!
Spotlight: GLOBAL 🌏🌎🌍
“Every woman who is elected brings parliaments one step closer to becoming more inclusive and representative. And it’s great to see much more diversity this year in many elections around the world. But overall progress is far too slow, with half the world’s populations still vastly under-represented. There is an urgent need to change this to strengthen democracy everywhere.”
Those are the words of Lesia Vasylenko, President of the IPU Bureau of Women MPs.
Vasylenko was responding to the findings of the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s (IPU) annual report on women’s representation that was released last week.
Here are some top findings:
FIRST, THE GOOD NEWS: For the first time ever, no functioning parliament in the world is made up only of men (as of January 01, 2023). That is, all parliaments for which IPU maintains data now have at least one woman member.
Yes, in 2023, THIS IS NEWS and worth celebrating!
As of January 01, 2023, women made up 26.5 percent of members of national parliaments around the world. A year ago, this share was 26.1 percent.
The American region (comprising both North and South America) has the best share of women’s representation – 34.9 percent of MPs across the region are women. The West Asian and North African region has the poorest representation - women make up just 16.3 percent of MPs on average among countries in the region.
Around the world, 22.7 percent of Speakers of Parliament are now women, up from 22 percent last year.
47 countries held Parliamentary elections in 2022 - a quarter (25.8 percent) of those elected across them were women. (In comparison, 28.6 percent women were elected across the 48 countries that went to polls a year earlier).
The share of women from minority and historically subjugated communities is increasing in various countries. In Brazil, for example, Black women made up 18 percent of all candidates contesting the 2022 election. Similarly, in France, 32 candidates from minority backgrounds were elected to the new National Assembly, an all-time high of 5.8% of the total.
In fact, women’s participation in parliament has never been as diverse and representative as it is in many countries today, notes the IPU.
As IPU has observed year after year, the presence of legislated gender quotas is a critical differentiator. Chambers with legislated quotas (or a combination of legislated quotas and voluntary party quotas) elected a significantly higher share of women (30.9 percent) than those without (21.2%).
Similarly, a higher share of women were elected in countries that had a proportional representation/mixed electoral system as compared to countries with majority systems.
Reflections & Reads
“The woman shaking up Italian politics (No, not the new Prime Minister): The New York Times profiles Elly Schlein
“Ardern, now Sturgeon: The ‘brutality’ of politics hits women hardest”: Bloomberg
“Strategies for strengthening women’s political participation in Latin America” via LSE Blogs
Thank you for reading. This Women’s Day, here’s a small request from us.
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We’ll see you next weekend with Issue 136! Don’t forget to hit the ❤️ button!