WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (L) and President of European Central Bank Christine Lagarde (Photo: Twitter)Hanoi (VNA) – More women than ever are holding political decision-making posts worldwide, but gender parity is still faroff, said the Inter-ParliamentaryUnion (IPU) and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and theEmpowerment of Women (UN Women) in a report released on March 7.
The report provides the latest rankings and regional distribution ofcountries with women in executive and parliamentary positions as of January 1. The results show that the number of women in political leadership roleshas increased overall. However, the presence of women in high-level leadershippositions in government or as heads of state and government remains verylimited.
Asof the beginning of this year, 11.3% of the countries worldwide had women as heads ofstate (excluding countries with monarchy), and 9.8% recorded women as heads ofgovernment. These both numbers increased compared to a decade ago when theywere at 5.3% and 7.3%, respectively.
The report pointed out that only 13 countries,mostly in Europe, had gender-equal cabinets, with 50% or more of women cabinetmembers as heads of ministries and above. Meanwhile, there were still nine countriesthat had no women cabinetmembers heading ministries.
According to the report, men continued to dominate in policy areassuch as economic, defence, justice, and home affairs portfolios. Women onlycomprise 12% of the cabinet ministers leading defence and local governmentportfolios, 11% of energy, natural resource fuels, and mining portfolios, and8% of transport portfolios.
"We’re seeing ongoing progress in the number of womenin politics this year, which is encouraging. However, we still have a long wayto go to reach gender equality when we see the current rates of growth,” said IPUSecretary-General Martin Chungong./.
