Women’s Power Index: Find Out Where Women Lead—and Why It Matters
Originally Published by Linda Robinson & Noel James for CFR
The Women and Foreign Policy program’s most recent update of the “Women’s Power Index” ranks 193 UN member states on their progress toward gender parity in political participation. It analyzes the proportion of women who serve as heads of state or government, in cabinets, in national legislatures, as candidates for national legislatures, and in local government bodies, and visualizes the gender gap in political representation.
Since the last update in 2021, global progress toward gender parity in political representation has increased by just over 1 point, to 28.5, on the 100-point aggregate scale employed. Seven new countries rose over fifty points in their gender parity score: Australia, Cape Verde, Chile, Germany, Monaco, Senegal, and Serbia. Austria, Namibia, and Portugal have fallen under fifty points. The United States ranks seventy-fifth overall on political gender parity, a decline from its previous rank of forty-third. Iceland rose from third to first place, which was previously held by Costa Rica.