How many women are in your parliament?

Intro text

Over the last 25 years, since the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action by the United Nations in 1995, the number of women parliamentarians has nearly doubled worldwide.

Yet, with a global average of only 24.9 percent, women’s representation in parliaments is still lagging in most places.

As of 2019, women occupy at least 30 percent of seats in parliament in only 20 of the 56 countries in the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe region, and at least 40 percent in only 6 of these.

Women's participation in parliament in ...

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Forecast based on past trends

If changes continue at the current pace, this is how women's representation in parliament will look like in by 2030.

We calculated this forecast by taking the average rate of improvement in from 1995 to 2019 and projecting it into the future.

Forecast based on recent trends

If changes registered in the past five years continue, this is how women's representation in parliament will look like in by 2030.

We calculated this forecast by taking the average rate of change in in the past five years and projecting it into the future.

Best case forecast

If the situation improves similarly to the country performing best in the region, this is how women's representation in parliament will look like in by 2030.

We calculated this forecast by taking the rate of improvement from the country performing best in the region and accelerating the change in with this amount over five years and then keeping it constant.

Worst case forecast

If the situation deteriorates similarly to the country registering the worst drop in the region, this is how women's representation in parliament will look like in by 2030.

We calculated this forecast by taking the drop rate in the country performing worst in the region and deteriorating the situation in with this amount over five years and then keeping it constant.

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The global average for women’s representation in parliament has inched up from 11.2 to 24.9 percent in the last two decades. That’s progress, but still nowhere near gender parity or even the one third threshold generally considered the minimum needed to shape law and policy for gender equality. Gender gaps in political and economic empowerment are the widest, while they have almost closed in other key measures of equality such as health and education. According to the 2020 Gender Gap Report, produced by the World Economic Forum, at the current rate of progress, it will take 94.5 years to close the gender gap in political empowerment and a staggering 257 years to achieve equal economic participation.

What’s more, after a decade of slow growth, women’s political empowerment (gender ratios in ministerial and parliamentary positions, and the ratio of years that women and men have served as presidents or prime ministers) has dropped or reversed in recent years, partly because of women’s lower tenure as heads of state.

In 22 western economies which collectively closed 41 percent of the gender gap in parliaments, progress reversed in 2018. Projections of women’s parliamentary representation on this website are in line with these trends, suggesting that in some countries rates could stagnate or even decline in the near future.

In recent years, 42 countries in the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) region have raised the proportion of women in parliament, with the overall average reaching 28 percent. However, women occupy more than 30 percent seats in only 20 of these countries, despite the fact that this threshold was the internationally agreed minimum target set in 1990, emphasised in the Beijing Platform in 1995 and later in Agenda 2030 in 2015. Among them are Spain and Finland with 47 percent, and Serbia with 37 percent.

's parliament compared to other parliaments in 2019

A number of countries and territories have sought to implement measures to bolster the number of women in politics, as a result of sustained efforts by women’s networks in parliament and local assemblies and pressure from women’s rights advocates. The most notable legislation in this area has been electoral gender quotas for candidates in parliamentary and local elections.

Over the last two decades, 22 countries in the UNECE region have adopted electoral gender quotas of varying degrees, ranging from 20 to 50 percent. In the Western Balkans, all countries and territories have made amendments to their electoral laws for national-level legislature, introducing electoral gender quotas of at least 30 percent on electoral lists, while Ukraine and Moldova have recently upped this to 40 percent. In 2000, France became the first country in the world to adopt a 50 percent electoral gender quota for the lower chamber of parliament.

However, when it comes to the effectiveness of electoral gender quotas in propelling women to the front lines of politics, the devil is in the details. In some countries, where the law was not designed specific enough, the leaders of political parties managed to ignore it by simply naming women candidates on ineligible positions in the second half of their lists. In others, the proposed quotas were only voluntary or even if mandatory, the fines or penalties for disregarding them were not strong enough to motivate a real change. Furthermore, if the quotas only apply to the lower house, progressive legislation about gender equality, designed by the new wave of women joining parliament, often gets stuck in the upper house which remains heavily dominated by men.

Despite these challenges, quota measures do signal a commitment to gender equality. Some countries have managed to fix the loopholes that prevented them from being effective. For example, in Armenia, Moldova, and Montenegro, the quota laws were amended to make sure women and men alternate on candidate lists. Election authorities in Greece and North Macedonia reject candidate lists that do not fulfil the quota requirements and Kyrgyzstan requires that any members of parliament stepping down must be replaced by someone of the same gender to prevent parties from pressuring their women candidates to give up their seats after being elected.

Overall, most countries and territories that have implemented electoral gender quotas have seen a significant increase of women representatives. With the right mix of measures, they can accelerate progress towards gender parity in parliaments by 2030. Out of the 22 countries in the UNECE region that have adopted electoral gender quotas, 17 have seen an increase in the number of women in parliament, while only five have noticed a downturn.

Quota legislation in Europe and Central Asia

Numbers don’t tell the whole story. In most countries, women entering electoral politics face an obstacle course – strewn with political parties dominated by men, lack of funding, gender stereotypes, and plain misogyny in politics, media and society.

A recent World Values survey in the countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia showed that large numbers of people believe that "men make better political leaders than women do." In Armenia, Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan, more than 40 percent of those surveyed agreed with this view, while in Uzbekistan, 54 percent of respondents strongly agreed with it. Not surprisingly, campaign financing is among the most significant challenges faced by women in politics.

Gender-based violence is another major challenge for women as it can limit their agency and influence their willingness to enter politics. Globally, an estimated one in three women suffers violence from intimate partners or non-partners, a figure that has stayed stubbornly high over two decades, despite tremendous efforts – in laws, services, and funding – to tackle this scourge. Violence against women and girls has also taken malevolent new forms in cyberstalking and bullying, vicious online sexual naming and shaming and ferocious trolling.

According to a UN report on Violence Against Women in Politics, women are especially a target because of their gender, and sexist threats, sexual harassment and gender-based violence add a dangerous dimension to any opposition they face. Take, for example, the cases of Afro-Brazilian human rights defender and city councillor, Marielle Franco, the UK Labour Party MP Jo Cox, and Honduran environmental activist Berta Cáceres, who were murdered for their political beliefs and grassroots leadership. Serbia’s Prime Minister, Ana Brnabić, faces persistent sexist and homophobic portrayals in the media, which sets aside her skills and qualities and focuses on her personal life.

Women’s continuing responsibility for household and care work is another major obstacle to their entering political or public life. The recent spurt of attention to the global gender pay gap has mostly ignored a fundamental and enduring cause for gender inequalities: women’s burden of unpaid work. Between 1997 and 2012, the time spent on average by women on housework and caregiving in countries worldwide has fallen by only 15 minutes per day, while for men it increased by just eight minutes per day.

Along with unpaid work, gender-based discrimination in the family, gender segregation in education and employment, and gender-based violence are all factors that limit women’s access to decision-making positions, in politics, government and public or private sectors.

In addition to these persisting obstacles, there are emerging challenges to gender equality. The political lurch to the right in countries around the world, led by conservative parties and ‘strongmen’ leaders espousing ultranationalist ideals, has given rise to a resurgence in patriarchal norms that has imperilled gender equality, human rights and social justice. Most disturbing is a backlash phenomenon against “gender ideology” that is rolling back women’s hard-won gains, especially in education, reproductive rights and protection from violence, and endangering the advances in rights for LGBTI people. This backlash is partly a response to the growing visibility of women in recent decades and, with its anti-feminist nature, has growing and insidious impacts.

The threats to women’s rights have changed and grown more complex since 1995, but the challenges remain the same. Beijing+25 is a moment to double down on our efforts to counter them – by turning laws and policies into action, investing much more in gender equality, rebuilding fragmented women’s movements, bridging gaps in intergenerational dialogue, fighting gendered social norms and entrenched patriarchy in all its forms.

Women in leadership must support and empower women everywhere to recover a sense of shared struggle and galvanize the energy that gave the world the Beijing Platform 25 years ago. Only then can we move women’s rights forward at a faster pace.

Above all, we must make gender equality everyone’s concern. So spread the word, share #EqualFuture widely and join forces with local initiatives for women’s rights. Together, we will succeed.

About Equal Future

Why did UNDP make this platform?

To mark the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform of Action, we created Equal Future as both a testament to the progress women have made in politics over the past 25 years and a reminder of how much work still remains to be done to achieve gender parity in parliaments.

With the Sustainable Development Goals setting clear goals for 2030 for all nations around the world, we need more tools to support data-driven analysis and hold governments accountable to their commitments to gender equality. By presenting some of this data visually, Equal Future aims to generate greater public awareness of the critical importance of these commitments.

Women’s equal access to leadership positions is intrinsic to advancing gender equality. UNDP has a longstanding record of working with parliaments, governments, local authorities, civil society and other actors to advance gender parity in decision-making. Equal Future brings together a wealth of data, information and stories to mobilize governments and parliaments to help accelerate progress towards this goal.

What is the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action?

In 1995, the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing produced the landmark Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, a 132-page blueprint for women’s rights minutely negotiated between governments and women’s groups from all over the world.

For more than a generation, the Beijing Declaration has been a lodestar for women’s movements and all others committed to gender equality. No other global UN agreement since has so comprehensively established the rights of women and girls as an inalienable part of human rights and freedoms. Although not binding on governments in the way UN conventions are, the Platform for Action from the Beijing women’s conference served as a foundation for transformative actions for gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Where did we source the data presented in the visualisations on the platform?

The visualisations on the Equal Future platform include data on the current proportion of women and men in national legislatures, information about existing electoral gender quota legislation, and forecast data about the evolution of women’s representation in parliaments until 2030.

The data on the current proportion of women and men in national legislatures was sourced mainly from the World Bank and the Inter-Parliamentary Union. The percentages refer to the representation of women and men in lower houses, to avoid inconsistencies when comparing data from countries with unicameral legislatures with that from countries with bicameral legislatures.

The information about existing gender quota legislation was drawn from desk research, mainly from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance.

The forecast data on the evolution of women’s participation in parliaments based on past and recent trends and best- and worst-case scenarios was produced by UNDP Istanbul Regional Hub.

All the information on the platform was collected between 30 June and 30 October 2019. Other sources include:

1. International databases: World Economic Forum, International Labour Organization;

2. Reports: Beijing+25 National Reports and UNDP Human Development Reports;

3. Websites: Legislation Online, European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), European Parliament, European Equality Law Network.

Why did we select only this region?

The 56 countries featured on this platform belong to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), established in 1947 to promote pan-European economic integration. UNECE is one of five regional commissions of the United Nations, which conducts five-year regional reviews of progress on global UN agreements. UNDP works in 17 of these countries as well as in Kosovo*.

How did we select the key events?

The key events we highlight are snapshots of women’s political achievements and advances in national legislation over the past 25 years. Despite their significance, we do not assume any causation between these events and the progress made in women’s political participation.

We limited the range of events featured to changes in legislation, institutional development and achievements of pioneering women politicians. The impact of social movements, social norms on gender roles and power relations are critical to women’s political advancement but are harder to quantify and were therefore not included.

How are women doing in the branches of government other than parliament?

Women’s advances in other branches of government and civil service are less systematically tracked, but the available data show that they run up against glass ceilings and glass walls. As of August 2019, only 14 out of 56 UNECE countries have or have had a woman head of state or head of government. In 2019, women made up more than 30 percent of ministers in only 14 UNECE countries and more than 50 percent in only five.

Still, some countries have made great strides. In Albania, the share of women in the cabinet reached 53 percent, up from seven percent in 2013. This dramatic increase resulted from the current government’s commitment to implementing a 2008 law on gender equality which stipulated a 30 percent quota for women in leadership positions in all public institutions. Similarly, in Estonia, women’s share of cabinet seats increased from eight to 36 percent.

On the other hand, some countries are failing to uphold their progress. In Kazakhstan, women’s share of cabinet seats fell from 16 percent to six percent and in Belgium it dropped from 42 to 25 percent. Furthermore, in most countries, women tend to predominate in the social sectors and are still a minority among ministers handling portfolios such as defence, industry or finance.

* References to Kosovo on this website shall be understood to be in the context of Security Council Resolution 1244 (1999).

** This essay is based on data from Women’s leadership in decision-making in the ECE region, a note prepared by the United Nation Development Programme (UNDP) for the Beijing+25 Regional Review Meeting in Geneva, held on 29 and 30 October 2019.