UNITED NATIONS, March 1 (UPI) -- There are more women elected to parliaments worldwide than ever before, but their number still remains too low.
Women now make up 17 percent of parliaments globally, up from 11 percent 12 years ago, said Anders Johnsson, secretary-general of the Inter-Parliamentary Union Thursday.
Yet "the bad news is that the increase in the number of women is lower than it was in the preceding year," he said. "If we are aiming for equality in parliament, in other words roughly 50 percent men and 50 percent women, well, then we will wait until the year 2077 to celebrate that event."
Johson proposed quotas be introduced to jump-start the numbers.
The country with the highest increase in the number of women in parliament in 2006 was the United Arab Emirates, which marked the first year women could both vote and stand for election. The number of women in parliament went from 0 to 22.5 percent, IPU said. Scandinavian countries continue to have high numbers of women parliamentarians - in Sweden women make up 40.8 percent of parliament.
As for the United States, even though Nancy Pelosi was recently appointed Speaker of the House, the country ranked 67th in the world, with women making up only 16 percent of Congress.
Johnsson said he was surprised to find the region leading in the number of women elected to parliament is Latin America, where 38.6 percent of parliamentarians are women.
