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New Zealand has taken the political representation of women in the world to a new level, with a record proportion of women MPs in Parliament, which for the first time exceeds the male rate. In the rest of the world, the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) points out in its latest report that progress has been made in almost all regions, although there is still a long way to go to achieve full parity.
This is an unprecedented event in the history of the country. On October 25, with the appointment of Labor MP Soraya Peke-Mason, there are already more women than men in the New Zealand Parliament.
Soraya Peke-Mason was appointed in June to replace House Speaker Trevor Mallard. Her appointment should have allowed women to occupy half of the 120 seats in Parliament and thus achieve parity. However, the resignation of independent MP Gaurav Sharma on October 18 means that women are now in the numerical majority.
The final composition of the New Zealand Parliament will depend on elections scheduled for December to fill the vacant seat. If a man is elected, the New Zealand legislature will be perfectly equal.
New Zealand women gained the right to vote in 1893. ‘Radio New Zealand’ recalls that “it was another 26 years before they were allowed to stand in legislative elections, and then 14 years before Elizabeth McCombs became the first woman parliamentarian of the country.
“This is a true testament to the maturity of Aotearoa [el nombre maorĂ de Nueva Zelanda] when it comes to gender equality,” said Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, adding that the New Zealand Parliament “always wins when diversity of voices are represented in law and government”.
New Zealand is the sixth country to achieve parity in its legislature, after Rwanda, Cuba, the United Arab Emirates, Nicaragua and Mexico.
It would take 50 years to achieve full parity in the world’s parliaments
In 2021, a report of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) estimated that the proportion of women parliamentarians worldwide had reached a record high of 25.5%. Thus, a quarter of deputies globally are women.
This proportion has increased slightly this year. The percentage of women in national governments rose by 0.6 percentage points, from 25.5% on January 1, 2021 to 26.1% on January 1, 2022. The IPU states that “in the 48 countries that elections have been held in 2021, the promotion of female candidates represents 28.6% of the seats to be filled, which represents a significant improvement compared to the 22.9% registered in 2020 for the elections as a whole”.
According to the IPU, this increase can be attributed to at least two factors: firstly, in these 48 countries the average representation of women in Parliament was already higher before the 2021 renewals and, secondly, 30 of these 48 countries have a quota system, compared to 25 of the 57 countries that held elections in 2020.
The Union insists that the role of quotas remains crucial in promoting female representation in 2021. “Countries with a quota system elected an average of 31.9% women to their lower or single chamber, while those with they do not have quotas, only 19.5% of women in total elected”.
But all these advances are still very slow. The Union notes that, at the current rate of progress, “it will take another 50 years to achieve gender parity in parliaments around the world.”
Overview of the state of parliamentary parity in the world
The Americas remain the region with the highest representation of women, with 39.1% of women parliamentarians elected in the 15 chambers of the 11 countries that held parliamentary elections in 2021. Overall, in January 2022, women represented 33 .8% of all parliamentarians in this region in all chambers and countries.
In Africa, Mali; Niger and Chad have made considerable progress despite serious security problems, the IPU stresses. This progress has been preserved from instability through the adoption or modification of quota policies, the organization says.
Europe is the second region in the world, after America, in terms of the proportion of women elected in 2021, with 30.4%. The IPU states that, for this region, “the proportion of women elected has increased by an average of 4.2 percentage points in the 12 countries that renewed their parliaments in 2021, representing the largest regional improvement.”
On January 1 this year, women represented 20.7% of parliamentarians in the Asia region as a whole, second only to the Middle East and North Africa. In Asia there was only a slight improvement (+0.3%) compared to the same time last year. In this region, female representation also suffered a setback in Myanmar and Afghanistan.
Finally, in the Asia Pacific region, with the exception of New Zealand, female representation in parliaments remained low or almost non-existent after the 2021 elections.
Local media and the IPU
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