Only getting worse: Less than 7% of world leaders women

United Nations, March 13

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When it comes to political power, women are totally outnumbered by men, accounting for less than 7 per cent of the world’s leaders and only 24 per cent of lawmakers, according to the latest statistics.

UN General Assembly president María Fernanda Espinosa told delegates to the Commission on the Status of Women that there has been a “serious regression” in the political power of women across the world.

The percentage of female elected heads of state dropped from 7.2 per cent to 6.6 — 10 out of 153 — from 2017 to 2018. The percentage of female heads of government dropped from 5.7 per cent to 5.2 — 10 out of 193 — in the same period.

In parliaments, the global share of women increased by nearly one percentage point from 2017 to 2018, to 24.3 per cent. It took 25 years to get to that figure, from 11 per cent in 1995.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the executive director of UN Women, called the current environment “not the most enabling for women to rise”.

“We also have pushback right now, which contributes to the slowing down of women wanting to contest for office, because it is brutal,” she said, citing political violence, verbal abuse, and abuse on social media that female candidates and politicians face in many countries.

Mlambo-Ngcuka said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres “called on us to push back against the pushback”. Women must be “change-makers”, she said, because national and global institutions were “made for men and by men”. — AP