Women in Parliaments

[pogge]

I ran across this chart yesterday which rates 188 countries according to the presence of women in their legislatures. It was linked to from a story which lamented the fact that the United States stood 68th on the list which isn't very good. Canada comes in at 52nd which ain't a whole lot better.

[Gigi]

Holy crap.  Barbados is 102nd.

Wait until I point that out to my mom.

[skdadl]

The country I see missing there is Wales. Yes, Wales is not fully independent -- like Scotland, they're sort of semi-demi-hemi-independent. They have a national assembly (don't know the no doubt charming Welsh name for it), and at last report I believe they were at 51 per cent women members ... which puts them first, even ahead of Rwanda, impressive though that achievement is.

[kuri]

Yes, it's unfortunate that they didn't include Wales, Scotland and N. Ireland in the chart for comparison considering Wales' achievement (which is an interesting one for Canada as their method of "twinning" ridings requires no special reform or action other than a commitment from the major political parties).

However, in a purely legal sense Wales has less autonomy than Alberta. In the very least, including it would mean including the Spanish  autonomous communities as well.