This International Women’s Day, there’s still a massive gap between countries when it comes to the number of women in their national legislatures — a 64 percentage point gap, to be precise.
The countries with the most women in their legislatures, in one map
According to the World Bank, Rwanda is ahead of the rest of the world, with women making up 64 percent of its legislature. Bolivia is second at 53 percent, making it the only country besides Rwanda with a legislature that’s majority women.
But one country lagging behind on this issue is the US, where women make up only 19 percent of the national legislature, below the global average of 22.5 percent. The US is far behind many countries — not just Rwanda and Bolivia, but Sweden, Germany, the UK, France, and even Afghanistan, among others.
In 2014, women were also a minority in every state legislature in America.
But the representation of women in national legislatures is slowly growing, based on data from the World Bank and first published by Broadline:
America, too, has made some gains over the years: In 1990, women made up 7 percent of Congress. In 2015, women made up 19 percent.
Still, the US still lags behind the average country.
Why is that the case? As Vox’s Ezra Klein previously wrote for the American Prospect, women tend to do about as well as men when they actually run. But women are also considerably less likely to run for office than men. So if society did more to encourage women into these kinds of positions, and remove existing barriers, the gender gap could potentially close.
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