UNITED NATIONS (AP)
A RECORD NUMBER of women are serving in parliaments around the world _ but they still account for just over 16 per cent of all lawmakers, the Inter-Parliamentary Union said in its annual report card.
IPU Secretary-General Anders Johnsson told a news conference yesterday that "the good news" is that women's participation continues to increase. But the figures also show "how much is left to be done to achieve true equality of status between men and women in politics," he said.
"Women account for roughly half of the world's population," Johnsson said. "They remain dramatically underrepresented in national parliaments and other levels of governments."
In 2005, Johnsson said, elections took place in 39 lower houses of parliament, or single-chamber parliaments, and 1,569 women gained seats - accounting for 20.5 per cent of members elected.
"The year 2005 also saw tremendous progress in countries emerging from conflicts- Afghanistan, Burundi, Iraq and Liberia are some of those countries where women had previously been excluded or marginalised from political life," he said.
And in a historic victory, Kuwaiti women were finally granted the right to vote and stand for national office, he said.
In another record set last year, women now account for over 30 per cent of the members in 20 parliaments, Johnsson said. Newcomers to the list included Andorra, Burundi, New Zealand and Tanzania.
But the target of having a minimum of 30 per cent women lawmakers was set at the U.N. women's conference in Beijing in 1995 for all parliaments -not just a small proportion, he noted.
The IPU statistic revealed that by the end of 2005, an average of 16.3 per cent of members in the upper and lower houses of parliament were women, up from 15.7 per cent in December 2004. This continued the progress since 1995 when the proportion of women in parliament stood at 11.3 per cent, the report said.
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