Leadership Facts & Figures

Political Participation

• Out of over 180 countries, only 13 have elected women heads of state or government:
• Michelle Bachelet, President of Chile (2006-)
• Micheline Calmy-Rey, President of Switzerland (2007-)
• Helen Clark, Prime Minister of New Zealand (1999-2002, 2002-2005, 2005-)
• Luísa Días Diogo, Prime Minister of Mozambique (2004-)
• Tarja Halonen, President of Finland (2000-2006, 2006-)
• Dalia Itzik, Acting President of Israel (2007-)
• Borjana Krišto, President of Bosnia and Herzegovina (2007-)
• Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, President of Liberia (2006-)
• Mary McAleese, President of Ireland (1997-2004, 2004-)
• Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, President of the Philippines (2004-)
• Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany (2005-)
• Portia Simpson-Miller, Prime Minister of Jamaica (2006-)
• Pratibha Patil, President of India (2007-)
• Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga, President of Latvia (1999-)
• Other women leaders in government include:
• 15 Vice Presidents and Deputy Heads of State:
• Kadidja Abeba, Deputy Head of State of Djibouti (1992-)
  
• Dr. Naja Al-Attar, Vice President of Syria (2006-)
• Dr. Linda Baboolal, Deputy Head of State of Trinidad and Tobago (2002-)
• Alix Boyd Knights, Deputy Head of State of Dominica (2000-)
• Laura Chinchilla Miranda, Vice President of Costa Rica (2006-)
• Fatemeh Javadi, Vice President of Iran (2005-)
• Dr. Szili Katalin, Deputy Head of State of Hungary (2002-)
• Annette Lü Hsin-lien, Vice President of Taiwan (2000-)
• Lourdes Mendoza del Solar, Vice President of Peru (2006-)
• Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Vice President of South-Africa (2005-)
• Joyce Mujuru, Vice President of Zimbabwe (2004-)
• Aisatou N'Jie Saidy, Vice President of The Gambia (1997-)
• Truong My Hoa, Vice President of Vietnam (2002-)
• Anna Psarouda-Benaki, Deputy Head of State of Greece (2004-)
• Ana Vilma de Escobar, Vice President of El Salvador (2004- )
• 2 Governor-Generals:
• Dame Calliopa Pearlette Louisy, Governor-General of Saint Lucia (1997-)
• Michaëlle Jean, Governor-General of Canada (2005-)

(Source: Worldwide Guide to Women in Leadership, http://www.guide2womenleaders.com/Female_Leaders.htm; Women World Leaders, http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/4642/; and Women Governors-General 1945-2005, http://www.terra.es/personal2/monolith/00women4.htm; Accessed March 2007. Verified from official government websites and leading international news media.)

• 17% of members of national parliaments worldwide are women.
• Women hold 8.8% of the seats in Arab states' parliaments, 17.0% of the seats in sub-Saharan African states' parliaments, 19.2% of the seats in European states' parliaments, and 19.9% of the seats in American states' parliaments.
• Rwanda has the highest proportion of women parliamentarians in the world with the National Assembly comprised of 48.8% women. This followed the passage of a constitutional referendum guaranteeing a minimum of 30% of parliamentary seats and other leadership positions to women.
• In 1995, Sweden became the first country to have an equal number of women and men in ministerial posts. At present, the Swedish cabinet has 52.4% women ministers.
• In the developing countries of Mozambique, Vietnam, and Namibia, 34.8%, 27.3%, and 26.9%, respectively, of seats in the lower house of parliament are held by women.
• On the other hand, in the developed nations of USA, France, and Japan, 16.3%, 12.2%, and 9.4%, respectively, of seats in the lower house of parliament are held by women.
• Austria was the only state to have elected a woman to the presidency of one of the parliament's chambers (the Bundesrat) before the Second World War.
• Currently, 27 women preside over one of the houses of the 187 existing parliaments, 64 of which are bicameral.
• In 1893, New Zealand became the first nation to grant women full voting rights.
• Among the countries in the developing world that were the earliest to grant women the right to vote were:
• Albania (1920)
• Mongolia (1924)
• Ecuador (1929)
• Turkey (1930)
• Sri Lanka (1931)

• Some of the latest countries to grant women suffrage were:
• Switzerland (1971)
• Iraq (1980)
• Namibia (1989)
• Kazakhstan (1994)
• Kuwait (2005)

• Women in Saudi Arabia still cannot exercise their right to vote nor stand for local elections. Men participated in the first local elections in 2005. In the United Arab Emirates, where the Parliament is officially appointed, neither men nor women have the right to vote or to stand for election.
  

(Source: Inter-Parliamentary Union, www.ipu.org, Accessed March 2007.)

• Quota systems are being established in some countries to ensure greater participation of women in decision-making.
• Reserved Seats:
• Following the military coup in 2005, 17.9% of seats in Mauritania's National Assembly are reserved for women.
• Since 2003 in Jordan, six seats (5.45%) are reserved for women in the national parliament. Women's groups are calling for a 20% quota for women.
• In Morocco, approximately 10% of parliamentary seats are reserved for women. (Following the October 2002 elections, the number of female parliamentarians increased from two to an Arab-world record of 35.)
• In India, 33% of seats at the local government level are reserved for women.
• In Tanzania, 20% of national seats and 25% of local government seats are reserved for women.
• Legislated Quota for Political Parties:
• In France, a 1999 constitutional amendment requires political parties to include 50% of women candidates on party lists submitted for election. There is a financial penalty if this commitment is not upheld.
• In South Africa, a municipal act states that political parties should ensure women comprise 50% of lists submitted for local-level elections. There is, however, no penalty if this commitment is not upheld.
• Voluntary Quota Adopted by Political Parties:
• In Norway, the Norwegian Labour Party, the Socialist Left Party, the Centre Party and the Christian People's Party all have a 40% quota system for both sexes.
• In 1994 in Sweden, the Social Democratic Party introduced the (zebra) principle of listing a woman on every second line of the party list.

(Source: International IDEA and Stockholm University Global Database Project, www.quotaproject.org, Accessed March 2007.)

• In the United Nations system, women comprise 37.1 % (2,136 out of 5,754) of all staff in the professional and higher categories with appointments of one year or more. Six out of 37 (16.2%) of the most senior policy-making positions (Under-Secretary-General) are held by women.

(Source: United Nations Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and the Advancement of Women, www.un.org/womenwatch/osagi/, Accessed November 2005.)

• There are 39 women ambassadors to the United Nations. They are from Algeria, Australia, Burkina Faso, Costa Rica, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Mexico, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Thailand, and Turkmenistan, among others.

(Source: United Nations Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and the Advancement of Women, www.un.org/womenwatch/osagi/, Accessed November 2005.)

• Haya Rashed Al-Khalifa is president of the United Nations' General Assembly. She is the third woman to serve in this position, after Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (1953-1954) and Angie Elisabeth Brooks (1969-1970).

• Among the developing nations who have not ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) are:
• Iran
• Qatar
• Somalia
• Sudan

• The United States is the only industrialized nation that has not ratified CEDAW.
• The United States and Sudan are the only two nations that have not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).

(Source: United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women, www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/; UNICEF Convention on the Rights of the Child, www.unicef.org/crc/; Accessed March 2007.)

Economic Decision-Making

• In over 60 of the world's states, women's income is 50% lower than men's income

(Source: United Nations Human Development Report 2005, www.hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2005, Accessed November 2005.)

• Women make up only 39% of salaried workers, but 62% of unpaid family workers.

(Source: United Nations Millenium Development Goals Report 2005, www.un.org/millenniumgoals, Accessed November 2005.)

• Women around the world continue to be significantly under-represented in the higher paid, higher prestige sectors of the workforce.
• In the Global North, in Italy only 21% of administrators and managers are women, and in the Netherlands only 26 percent.
• In the Global South, in the Philippines 58% of administrators and managers are women, and in the Bahamas 40 percent.

(Source: United Nations Statistics on Women and Men, www.unstats.un.org, Accessed November 2005.)

• Women's participation in high level of economic decision-making remains low throughout the world.
• In the United States, women hold 50.3% of all management and professional positions, but only 7.9% of Fortune 500 top earners and 1.4% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women.

(Source: Catalyst, www.catalyst.org, Accessed November 2005.)