Parliaments & Representatives

Highlighted Resources

To accelerate gender equality, UN Women launches a Call to Action to parliamentarians

(Tokyo, 27 June)—In the lead up to the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (Beijing+25) and UN Women’s ground-breaking campaign commemorating the anniversary, “Generation Equality: Realizing women’s rights for an equal future”, UN Women Executive Director, Phumzile...

MPs discuss ways to achieve gender equality at CSW63

The IPU and UN Women held a joint parliamentary event at the 63rd Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW63) on 13 March 2019 in New York. Participants at the event discussed ways of making social protection programmes more gender responsive.The parliamentary event, ...

International Idea's GSoD In Focus: Political gender equality and the global state of democracy indices

This GSoD In Focus showcases global and regional data around trends in and the progression of gender equality, based on data from the Global State of Democracy (GSoD) Indices. The GSoD Indices are International IDEA’s measurement of democracy for 158 countries between 1975 and 2017.The political...

Women in Politics Map 2019

This map is a unique visual tool that captures women’s participation in executive government and in parliament on a given date—1st January 2019. The map of Women in Politics not only provides a country ranking for both ministerial and parliamentary representation, but also statistics on...

Women in parliament in 2018: The year in review

The annual report provides an update and analysis of progress made and setbacks encountered by women in parliament further to elections and renewals held over a year. Produced every year on the occasion of International Women's Day (8 March), it presents data on women in national parliaments,...

New IPU report shows well-designed quotas lead to significantly more women MPs

According to the IPU’s yearly analysis, the share of women in national parliaments increased by nearly one percentage point last year, from 23.4 per cent in 2017 to 24.3 per cent in 2018. This 0.9 percentage point increase confirms the continuing rise of women in parliament, at a slightly...

Barriers to Women Entering Parliament and Local Government in the United Kingdom

In January 2018, the Government Equalities Office (GEO) commissioned this rapid evidence review, the two broad aims of which were to identify: a) barriers to women’s participation in local and national government; and b) evidence of policies and practices, sometimes referred to as Positive...

Representation Matters: Women in the U.S. Congress

The importance of having women serving in Congress is still not fully appreciated or understood. In order to document women’s contributions to governing and understand how women are navigating the contemporary environment of party polarization, the Center for American Women and Politics, with...

The International Congress of Parliamentary Women's Caucuses adopts the Dublin Declaration

The International Congress of Parliamentary Women's Caucuses took place on 9-10 September 2018 in Dublin Castle, Ireland.The conference brought together parliamentarians from across the globe to discuss issues facing women and how parliamentarians can work to address them. Parliamentarians came...

Women and corruption: What positions must they hold to make a difference?

This paper in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization - Volume 151 examines in what roles women have an impact on corruption by focusing on female labor force participation and their presence in the parliament. Since much of the corruption literature is plagued either by the lack of...

Fawcett Society Report: The Sex and Power Series

The Sex and Power series was first published by the Equal Opportunities Commission fifteen years ago, then taken over by the Equality and Human Rights Commission for several years, and then for 5 years up to 2015 the ‘Counting Women in Coalition’ collected and collated data on women’s...

Women in parliament: Assessing the effectiveness of gender quotas in Poland

Gender quotas aim to increase women’s parliamentary representation. However, the effectiveness of quotas varies. This article explores this issue further by examining the case of Poland, where gender quotas were introduced in 2011. The Polish case presents an interesting puzzle. Although the...