Women in politics worldwide

While no national parliament in the world has full equality in the number of seats held by women and men, the UK is particularly under-represented, with women making up just 19.7% of our MPs.

We are not the worst offender - the UK ranks 41st out of 184 countries around the world in terms of the percentage of women holding office in the lower or single house of the national parliamentary body. The world average proportion of women members of single or lower chamber legislatures is just 16%, less than 10% of cabinet members and 20% of lower ranking government ministers are female, and only 39 nation states have ever selected a woman as prime minister or president.

But we could do a lot better. International evidence has shown that the only way to significantly increase the number of women in parliament is to use positive action measures, such as all-women shortlists, quotas and list-proportional representation systems.

Countries such as Rwanda, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark and the Netherlands top the international representation list, and the UK would do well to learn from their examples.

From the blue downloads box on the right hand side of this page, you can download:

• An analysis of what measures are most effective for increasing the numbers of women in parliaments across the world.

You can also follow the link to the IPU's webiste to find facts and figures on which countries have the most women in their national parliaments.