Elections

Up to 63.8 percent of the 80 members of the newly elected Rwandan Chamber of Deputies, the lower house, are women, a list from the National Electoral Commission (NEC) has shown.

The new development represents an increase of women MPs, up from 61 percent in the previous parliament.

A 2021 report dubbed ‘Women in Parliament’ published by the Inter-Parliamentary Union showed that Rwanda was the world’s leading country in terms of having the largest number of women in government positions.

Last week saw a change of Government and a brand-new cohort of MPs (335 new MPs) elected; but with all this churn how representative is our new House of Commons? Before the election we published analysis of the candidates standing for election showing that only 31% of selected candidates were women. Let’s see how many were elected…

Only 208 women will sit in the Assemblée Nationale, representing just over a third of all MPs. This is the second time in two years that the proportion of women in the Assemblée has fallen.

The first woman governor of Tokyo, Yuriko Koike, has won a third term – against another woman candidate. The race between multiple women signifies a push for greater female representation in Japanese politics, which is still overwhelmingly dominated by men.

Eight years ago, Yuriko Koike became the first woman to lead Tokyo, beating her male predecessor. She won her third term as governor July 7, and one of her closest rivals was a woman.

Following an intense week of elections, the IPU’s two founding members, France and the United Kingdom, have just completed their parliamentary elections.

How have both parliaments fared in terms of gender equality? How do they compare to previous chambers and the IPU’s global average of women in parliament which stood at 26.9% before these latest elections?