What do Rwanda, Senegal, Seychelles and South Africa have in common? The answer is that these four African nations are among the 10 countries with the highest number of women in their parliaments. Rwanda heads that list: 64% of its MPs are women. Seychelles is fifth, with 44%, while Senegal comes seventh, with a parliament that comprises 43% women and South Africa is ninth, with 42% of its parliament women.
The UK doesn’t show up well in this particular set of statistics from the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU). Women hold 148 of the UK’s 650 parliamentary seats, putting the country at 56th in the list, just below Kyrgysztan. The US fares even worse, coming joint 72nd with Panama. While Sweden (6th) and Finland (8th) unsurprisingly score well, it is tiny Andorra (3rd), with 50% female MPs, that is the highest ranked European country.
To read the article published on March 24th 2015, please click here.
What do Rwanda, Senegal, Seychelles and South Africa have in common? The answer is that these four African nations are among the 10 countries with the highest number of women in their parliaments. Rwanda heads that list: 64% of its MPs are women. Seychelles is fifth, with 44%, while Senegal comes seventh, with a parliament that comprises 43% women and South Africa is ninth, with 42% of its parliament women.
The UK doesn’t show up well in this particular set of statistics from the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU). Women hold 148 of the UK’s 650 parliamentary seats, putting the country at 56th in the list, just below Kyrgysztan. The US fares even worse, coming joint 72nd with Panama. While Sweden (6th) and Finland (8th) unsurprisingly score well, it is tiny Andorra (3rd), with 50% female MPs, that is the highest ranked European country.
To read the article published on March 24th 2015, please click here.