The worldwide average for representation of women in national parliaments is about 21 percent. This number isn’t great. But 1990 the average was about 10 percent. We made at least some progress, even though there is a lot of space for improvement. Even in Europe with the highest average it’s just about a quarter.
The data was collected by the IPU, an international organization of Parliaments. Data isn’t perfect of course, not everyone has parliaments, they are quite different sometimes. In cases there are two parliaments in the country, it takes the bigger one.
The country with the highest share was a surprise for me. I never would have guessed Ruanda with 61 percent. There is a sad backstory though. According to the guardian, this was a consequence of the genocide in Ruanda: “70% of the country’s remaining population was female and quotas were introduced requiring 30% of political and government candidates to be women”
I was generally surprised how many African countries were in the top 20. This is probably due to my ignorance about African countries, but if someone can explain me why, that would be very interesting.
