Flemish Parliament has highest percentage of women in Europe

The Flemish Parliament has a higher percentage of female MPs than any other regional or federal parliament in Europe, according to a report commissioned by parliament speaker Jan Peumans.

The report shows that 44.4% of members of Flanders’ parliament are women, which puts the region’s assembly just ahead of Sweden on 43.6% and Finland on 42.5%. The Flemish Parliament currently has 55 women representatives out of 124. The number has increased sharply since the regional parliament’s first elections in 1995, when 19.3% percent of those elected were women.

The high score was partly the result of new legislation requiring Flemish political parties to have both sexes represented by the top two names on the party list (which determines who is first in line to enter parliament after the votes have been counted).

In Brussels, women make up 41.6% of parliament, in Wallonia, the figure is 42.7%, and on the federal level, the figure is  39.3%. These figures put Belgium well ahead of most other democracies, with women making up only 25% of Luxembourg’s parliament, 22.3% in the UK and 18.9% in France. 

photo courtesy Flemish Parliament