Women constitute only 11.7% of parliaments worldwide

Women in the Indian Parliament constitute only 7.2 per cent with 39 MPs in the 545-member Lok Sabha, compared to 40.4 per cent in Sweden, which leads with 141 women in a 349-member house.

In fact, an international study shows that women hold just 11.7 per cent of all seats in parliaments around the world, and only 7.1 per cent of parliaments are headed by women.

Women hold just 4,512 seats against 33,981 held by men in the world's parliaments in 1997. (The gender breakdown is not available for 2,260 other seats).

The survey by the Geneva-based Inter-Parliamentary Union 'Men and Women in Politics: Democracy Still in the Making' says women must first achieve equitable power within political parties if they are to close the gap in Parliament. At present, only 10.8 per cent of party leaders and less than one-third of party board members are women, despite the large number of female party activists.

The number of women in parliaments grew by a tiny 0.4 per cent since the last IPU survey in July 1995 by virtue of elections in 73 of the 179 existing parliaments. A cursory look shows that 10 countries do not not have any women in parliament: Comoros, Djibouti, Kiribati, Kuwait, Micronesia, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Saint Lucia, Tonga, and the United Arab Emirates.

While the top five countries with women parliamentarians are Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, and the Netherlands, India stands a lowly 65th in the list drawn up by the IPU.

Even the United States, stands 41st in the list, with 51 women in the House of Representatives (11.7 per cent)

The 1997 IPU study surveyed all political parties in the world's parliaments -- numbering over 1000 -- on the status of women. ''The survey demonstrates that all countries, with the exception of the Nordic countries, conduct politics in a way that excludes nearly half of their human resources and talents. It is democracy that suffers and development that is slowed,'' the report says.

The report shows only 7.7 per cent of parliamentary group leaders are women and only nine per cent of the post of party spokespersons are captured by the fair sex.

The average proportion of females candidates in comparison to male candidates is almost two per cent in Arab countries, under 10 per cent in Asia and the Pacific, and barely 10 per cent in Africa. It is about 40 per cent in the five Nordic countries.

In the past fifty years, only 38 of the 186 states that have had a parliament have ever selected a woman to preside over a house of parliament. Only six countries have laws stipulating a minimum percentage of women in national parliaments.