Can You Guess Which Countries Have More "Women In Parliament" Than The USA?

[ReptilianPeon]

The "Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance" has a fascinating clickable map (and list) regarding women in "Women in Parliament". Before we get into the crux of this post some other quick and fascinating facts (the links open to the respective country's page):

1. I found out that in spite of having no quotas or reserved seats, Cuba has the third highest number of women in their parliament in the world at 48.9%, so it gets a special mention.
2.Only Bolivia (53.1%) and Rwanda (63.8%) have a higher percentage of women than Cuba, which also makes them the only two countries to have more women elected than men.
3. Qatar and Vanuatu have the joint lowest number of women in their parliament with 0% being women.
4. Greenland have also been given a figure of 0% but then it's not independent country...

The figure the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance gives for the United States is 19.3% " women in parliament". Now for the fun part...

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None of the following are countries where being a woman is advisable (I could use more "colourful" language). So there's an irony here, in that fact that each of them have more women in their parliaments than the so-called "Leader of the Free World". Maybe you'll laugh along with me. Or maybe not.

27.7% of Afghan parliament is women
In Pakistan the figure 19.6%, again higher.
In Iraq the figure is 25.3%
In Somalia the figure is 24.4%
South Sudan has a figure of 27.3%.
But Sudan is even better at 30.5%!
But here's the real shocker: Women make up 19.9% of Saudi Arabia's Legislative Assembly! (This mainly/all due to their system of reserving seats for women)

Whether or not the parliament is Saudi Arabia actually does anything meaningful (it's an "Absolute Monarchy") is discussion for another time of course. I'm as cynical of the Saudis as the next person. I'm sure it's just tokenism on the part of the Saudi's, but it's still shocking considering the issues that the country has. Take the figure with a 'huge pile of salt' I guess?

The other Gulf Cooperation Countries all have lower percentages than Saudi Arabia, as does Iran. Wonder if anyone can find anymore surprises. I'd love to know.

Having stated all that, even though I want to see more diversity among elected officials, I'm not a fan of quotas myself. I'm of the belief that people should be put elected based on their merits alone. I would hate to find out that somebody got sidelined by a less qualified individual simply because there was a quota to meet, and the less qualified individual is from a particular demographic (that helps meet the demands of the quota).

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