Women make up 24% of members of national legislative bodies around the world, a share that has ticked up over the past decade but remains far smaller than their share of the overall world population, according to an analysis of data from the Inter-Parliamentary Union.
At the end of 2008, by comparison, just 18% of the members of upper and lower parliamentary bodies around the world were women. The largest increases in female representation between 2008 and this year occurred in Central America (13 percentage points), the Middle East and North Africa (9 points) and Western Europe (8 points).
Despite this growth, there are fewer women than men holding legislative seats collectively in every world region. As such, no region has reached gender parity in the share of women in its countries’ legislatures.
Continued reading here, courtesy of Pew Research Center.