Friday, 5 September 2008

Why so few women in politics?


Interesting stats for you:

There are 125 female MPs at the House of Commons in Westminster (out of 646) – 19.3% of the total.

Female representation in the Scottish Parliament has dropped from 39.5% in 2003 (what was the second highest in Europe – behind Sweden) to 31.3% in 2008.

Rwanda – with its turbulent history – leads the way with female representation in Parliament on 48.8%. Sweden is second on 47%. The UK Parliament is a lowly 70th position, behind states renowned for their equal rights legislation such as Afghanistan, (29th, 27.7%) Iraq (35th, 25.5%) and China (59th, 21.3%).

And, according to the BBC, at this rate it would take 500 years for female representation at Westminster to achieve parity with men – without some form of positive discrimination.

Last post of the day – something to think about over the weekend.

1 comments:

George 7 September 2008 at 21:26  

Interesting reading, though I wonder how many researchers and 'behind-the-scene' workers are women compared to men. The well used phrase 'Behind every successful man there is a woman.' comes to mind!

I really hope this situation you describe changes soon. I think the election of Sarah Palin to VP in America will go someway in destroying the glass ceiling and will give the drive and inspiration for women to realise their full potential and ambitions.

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