Women's representation in Parliamentary seats around the world has stagnated in the last two years, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Geneva, Switzerland. Women now hold 11.7% of Parliamentary seats worldwide, up just 0.4% since 1995. The United States is tied for 41st place (out of 107 places), with 11.7% of women in Congress.

The Inter-Parliamentary Union report, Men and Women in Politics: Democracy Still in the Making, analyzes various methods that countries have used to help women gain political power, including voluntary positive party quotas, government-mandated quotas of women candidates, reserved seats in parliament for women, and proportional representation voting systems. The report suggests that proportional representation voting systems are most favorable to electing more women to public office.

"Proportional representation" is the name used for a variety of voting systems whereby candidates win seats in proportion to the percentage of votes they receive. For example, one system might involve "multi-party" districts, in which two or more candidates can win in a given district. Voters could then choose their top two (or more) choices, and the candidates with the highest percentage of votes would win. In contrast, almost all elections in the United States are single-member-district "winner-take-all" systems, in which the candidate who wins the most votes wins the entire election, and the other candidates get nothing. The U.S.-type voting system is the least favorable for electing women.

Many political parties have instituted voluntary quotas in which candidates are chosen so that each gender has at least a certain minimum percentage of candidacies, such as 30%. These types of positive voluntary party quotas were first adopted by the Social Democratic parties in Scandinavia. The idea spread throughout Europe and then the world. More conservative parties also started instituting voluntary positive party quotas in order to be politically competitive. The voluntary party quotas are what began the increase in the number of women in parliaments.

Some countries such as Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, North Korea, and Nepal, require all parties to put forth a certain percentage of women candidates (between 5% and 33.3%). Other countries, such as Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, the Philippines, and Uganda, require that a certain number of seats in Parliament be reserved for women (between 5% and 14%).

Of the 12 countries with the highest proportion of women in Parliament, all use either proportional representation voting systems, or mixed systems (in which some candidates are elected through proportional representation, and others through winner-take-all systems). These countries are: Sweden (40.4% women in Parliament), Norway (39.4% women), Finland (33.5% women), Denmark (33% women), Netherlands (31.3% women), Seychelles (27.3% women), Austria (26.8% women), Germany (26.2% women), Iceland (25.4% women), Argentina (25.3% women), Mozambique (25.2% women), and South Africa (25% women). Eight out of these twelve countries also have major political parties which set quotas for women candidates, but only one of these countries, Argentina, has a national law requiring a certain percentage of women candidates from all parties. None has seats reserved for women.

For more information on instituting proportional representation systems in the United States, call the Center for Voting and Democracy at (202) 828-3062.

The report is prepared by United States embassies in each country. The emphasis on women's human rights is in large part thanks to the advocacy of Theresa Loar, the State Department's Senior Coordinator for International Women's Issues. The human rights situation in the United States was not analyzed in the report.