Women in politics

One hundred years ago, in 1907, women entered parliament for the first time in world history. After elections nineteen female parliamentarians stepped into the Finnish parliament. Finland was in 1906 also the first country that gave women active as well as passive voting rights. What is the situation of women in politics in 2008? An overview of women in parliament, female heads of state, and female prime ministers and ministers.

Parliament
During meetings about ‘women in politics’ I often ask participants to create a top ten world ranking list with regard to the number of women in parliament. Until a few years ago this list was headed by North-European countries with Sweden at the first position. But things are changing. Since 2003 Rwanda is number 1 with 48,8 % of women, Costa Rica is number 4, Cuba number 8, and Mozambique number 9. These countries are rarely mentioned on participants’ lists. Most of the time countries like the United States of America, the United Kingdom and France are mentioned. Unjustly, because these countries score much lower: respectively 16.3%, 19.7% and 18.5% of women in parliament; they are not even in the top 50.
What are the reasons why these last mentioned countries score so low? The most important reason is the type of electoral system. Research shows that countries with a constituency voting system using the principle 'first past the post' score noticebly lower than countries with proportional representation.
Another tool that influences female participation in parliaments is the quota system. This tool can be used in different ways: some countries have quota for seats destined for women, for example in Rwanda and Morocco. In other countries political parties have a quota system, the social democrats in the Netherlands, for example, uses a so-called 'zipp system', which means that men and women take turns on the list. In Scandinavian countries parties use quota for women as well. There are also counties where quota have been fixed in the electoral law; in Belgium half of the candidates on the list needs to be female. Unfortunately, it has not been fixed on which places these candidates should be put.
Heads of state
At the moment there are seven female president in the world. Two of them are heading a European country: Tarja Halonen has been presindent of Finland since 2000, and Mary McAleese took the Presidency of Ireland over from Mary Robinson in 1997. Other female presidents rule Liberia, India, Phillipines, Chili and Argentina. Another category are the non-elected heads of state. In Denmark, United Kingdom and the Netherlands we can find a queen.

Prime minister
Sirimavo Bandaranaike from Sri Lanka was in 1960 the first female prime-minster of the world and Indira Ghandi from India in 1966 the second. In Europe we had to wait until Margareth Thatcher became prime-mister of the UK in 1979. At the moment there are five female prime-ministers: in New-Zealand, Mozambique, Dutch Antilles, Germany, and Julia Tymoshenko has been voted for in Ukraine just now.
Ministers
If we look at the share of female ministers in EU-15, we can see that this changes between 5 and 60%. Scandinavian countries are in the lead here: Finland 60%, Sweden 45%, and Denmark 37%. Norway, not a EU member, has 53% female ministers. At the bottom of the list are South-European countries Portugal (11%) and Greece (5%), but at the same time we find Spain with 41% female ministers at the top.
For more information contact me on: l.dekker@publiek-politiek.nl, or check one of the following interesting websites:
World ranking list of women in parliament: www.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm
Female presidents: www.guide2womenleaders.com
Female prime-ministers: www.terra.es/personal2/monolith/00women3.htm
Lisette Dekker, Dutch Centre for Political Participation (IPP)
Translation: Suzanne Jansen, Dutch Centre for Political Participation (IPP)