More women in world parliaments

United Nations, (Prensa Latina)

The Inter-Parliamentarian Union announced that the number of women occupying seats in legislative institutions reached record levels in 2008 with indexes of one out of every five elected that year. The report Women in Parliament 2008 was given at a press conference that informs that of the 12,879 renewed seats from 66 parliaments in 54 countries last year, women occupied 2,656, or 20.6 percent.

Considered a continued tendency in the past five years 60 percent of the women deputies are reelected and statistics indicate that in the lower and higher houses women occupy 18.3 percent of the seats.

Specialists say these figures demonstrate a significant improvement in comparison to a decade in which women deputies merely represented 13 percent.

Regionally the IU indicated that in Africa the parliament of Rwanda made history when a majority of women occupied the Lower House representing 56.3 percent while in Angola the deputies represented 37 percent of the seats.It also pointed to the impressive advances in Latin America with 26.5 percent of seats in 12 renewed parliaments.

The worst situation of women in politics is in the State-Islands of the Pacific where no woman was elected in the recent elections of Nauru, Palau and Tonga.

In a report of legislative institutions in the world where more than 30 percent are women, Rwanda occupies first place with 56.3 percent, Sweden second with 47 percent and Cuba third with 43.2 percent.They are followed in descending order by Finland, Holland, Argentina, Denmark, Angola, Costa Rica, Spain, Norway, Belgium, Mozambique, New Zealand, Iceland, Nepal and South Africa.

In the opinion of the president of IU, the Namibian Theo-Ben Gururab, it is unfortunate that there are no advances in all the parliaments of the world.

While impressive advances were achieved in 2008, particularly in Africa, there is still much to do in those countries where women are largely absent in government institutions, he commented.