Women’s progress toward equal representation in politics has slowed to a crawl: UN stats

New research says decades of gains for women representatives in national legislatures and top government posts worldwide have slowed to a crawl.

The UN women’s arm and the Inter-Parliamentary Union released statistics Wednesday indicating that at last year’s growth rate, it would take a half-century for women to reach equal representation with men in parliaments.

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Three years ago, national legislatures were on track to hit gender parity in less than two decades, with the average proportion of women parliament members growing 11.5 per cent in a year. Last year’s growth was less than half that rate.

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The number of women government ministers increased nominally, from 730 to 732. The number of women presidents or prime ministers dropped from 19 to 17.

READ MORE: Young women fill House of Commons on International Women’s Day

But a record 53 women presided over parliamentary chambers.