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The 10 Countries With the Most Women in Parliament |
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The Inter-Parliamentary Union refreshed its ranking on 1 August. Rwanda has led it since 2008 and now seats 51 women in 80 chairs. Five of the top ten are in Latin America. The first Nordic country is ninth. The United States is 84th. |
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Source: IPU Parline monthly ranking of women in national parliaments, 1 August 2026. Share of seats in the single or lower house. |
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| What's Surprising |
Rwanda seats 51 women in 80 chairs. The 2003 constitution reserves 24 of those seats for women and sets a floor of 30%. Voters went well past it. The share has been above 60% since 2013, and Rwanda has topped this table since 2008, when it became the first parliament anywhere to elect a female majority.
The United Arab Emirates is seventh, tied with Andorra and ahead of Denmark. Its Federal National Council has 40 members. Half are elected and half are appointed by the rulers, and a 2019 decree fixed the split at 20 women and 20 men. This is a ranking of seats, not of democracies.
Costa Rica is the new entry. Its 1 February election returned 30 women to 57 seats, the first female majority in the assembly's history. It moved from 49.1% to 52.6% in a night, and from ninth to fourth.
| What's Not Surprising |
The top of this table was legislated. Rwanda reserves seats. Mexico wrote parity into its constitution in 2019 and sits at 50.4%. Bolivia and Costa Rica require candidate lists that alternate women and men. Latin America spent fifteen years turning quotas into parity rules, and five of the top ten are Latin American.
The bottom is where it has always been. Asia averages 22.2%, the Middle East and North Africa 17.7%. Japan ranks 147th at 14.6%, India 151st at 13.8%, Nigeria 176th at 4.2%. Three parliaments have no women at all: Oman, Tuvalu and Yemen.
The rich democracies sit in the middle. Britain is 26th, France 43rd, Italy 60th, Germany 62nd, Canada 72nd, the United States 84th. No G7 country makes the top 25. Norway, which tops nearly every other gender index, is 21st.
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63.8% Rwanda's share of women in parliament. The world average is 27.3%. Rwanda is more than double it. |
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84th Where the United States ranks, on 28.8%. Eighty-three countries seat a larger share of women. |
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8 Countries where women hold at least half the seats. The ranking covers more than 180. |
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0 Women in the parliaments of Oman, Tuvalu and Yemen. Three chambers on Earth still have none. |
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75 years How long parity takes at last year's pace. The world share rose 0.3 points in 2025, to 27.5%. |
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The IPU updates this table every month. The United States votes on 3 November and, at 28.8%, has more room to move than any other large democracy. The world share rose 0.3 points in 2025, the same as in 2024. Watch whether it beats 0.3 this year. We'll be watching. |
