Meanwhile, quotas were identified as playing a “critical role” in boosting women’s representation in the 49 countries that held elections last year.
Chambers with some form of legislation in place saw an average of 31 percent female appointments, compared to 23 percent in chambers without quotas.
Large regional differences
the americas remained the region with the highest representation of women in parliament: women represent 35.6% of all parliamentarians.
Elsewhere, Kyrgyzstan recorded the greatest progress in women’s representation with a 12.9 percent increase in the number of women in its Parliament, closely following Saint Vincent and the Grenadines with an increase of 12.3 percent.
By contrast, the report found that women’s parliamentary representation remained the lowest in the Middle East and North Africawhere women occupy on average only 16.2 percent of the seats.
three countries, Oman, Tuvalu and Yemen do not have female parliamentarians in their lower or single chambers.
Women victims of violence
Amid the stagnation of women’s representation in parliament, female parliamentarians are also hit harder by a rise in public intimidation.
A recent IPU report on the rise in political violence against parliamentarians found that women parliamentarians are more affected than men by public intimidation – both online and offline – with 76 percent of the women surveyed suffered violence compared to 68 percent of the male legislators..
“This growing phenomenon may discourage some women from running for public officean additional obstacle to progress in women’s political representation,” the IPU said in a statement on Friday.
talking to UN News Last month, Valentina Grippo, Italian parliamentarian of the European Delegation to the IPU, highlighted the difficulties that parliamentarians have in doing their work today: “If you say something that is not perfectly in line with what your audience wants to hear, then you have a multi-pronged attack.yes.”
However, the report notes that some countries have taken steps to address violence, such as the Colombian Parliament which passed a law to prevent and punish violence against women in politics.