The UK has a lot to learn about gender equality from countries like Rwanda

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/mar/24/uk-gender-equality-rwanda-women-in-parliament

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What do Rwanda, Senegal, Seychelles and South Africa have in common? The answer is that these four African nations are among the 10 countries with the highest number of women in their parliaments. Rwanda heads that list: 64% of its MPs are women. Seychelles is fifth, with 44%, while Senegal comes seventh, with a parliament that comprises 43% women and South Africa is ninth, with 42% of its parliament women.

Of the 46 countries where women account for more than a quarter of parliamentarians, 14 are in Africa

The UK doesn’t show up well in this particular set of statistics from the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU). Women hold 148 of the UK’s 650 parliamentary seats, putting the country at 56th in the list, just below Kyrgysztan. The US fares even worse, coming joint 72nd with Panama. While Sweden (6th) and Finland (8th) unsurprisingly score well, it is tiny Andorra (3rd), with 50% female MPs, that is the highest ranked European country.

Worldwide, only one in five MPs are women and this week, more than 400 female parliamentarians from around the world meet in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa to address the complex issue of getting more gender parity into our elected assemblies.

Of the 46 countries in the world where women account for more than a quarter of parliamentarians, 14 are in Africa. One possible reason for there being more female MPs in countries not otherwise best known for equal society or female employment is that often these countries have accepted the need for quotas for female candidates in elections, whereas many western countries, including the UK, prefer other tactics. In Rwanda, 30% of all candidates in elections must be women, while in Senegal, since 2012, it is 50%.

According to the IPU, electoral quotas, which have been used in more than 120 countries have underpinned much of the global rise in women MPs to date. But last year saw the slowest increase so far (0.3%) and the IPU says other measures are needed to complement the use of quotas, if progress is to be sustained.

But the conference in Addis Ababa is about more than just numbers and getting women into power. The real isssue is what women do with that power once they have it and the potential impact of female leadership on policy-making.

The sessions at this year’s conference range include the practical, such as media training for female politicians (or “how to answer stupid questions”), but mainly focus on the complex and interrelated challenges that face us all as global citizens. How can we make sure that prosperity benefits everyone? What kind of leadership will best help us tackle growing security risks around the world?

As Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, who chairs the African Union Commission, put it in her welcome to this year’s conference, we are beginning to see a difference in the laws and policies in parliaments where we have a critical mass of women.

Canada has a long history of taking positive action to promote under-represented groups in public services

Implementing those policies depends on public managers as much as politicians. There isn’t as much data on the number of women in public leadership roles as for political roles, but figures collated by consultants EY (formerly Ernst and Young) on the G20 countries show that countries that tend to be strong on one indicator do well on both. South Africa is relatively high for women in senior positions in politics, public sector leadership and private sector leadership: a testament, according to EY, to the country’s strong framework of targets and affirmative action, while Canada, which has the highest number of female public leaders in the world (45.9%), has a long history of taking positive action to promote under-represented groups in public services.

Perhaps it’s time for the UK to start learning from other countries about how to improve gender parity. Only one female parliamentarian, MEP Linda McAvan, is at the Addis conference. Before International Women’s Day on 8 March, journalist Michael Crick drew up a list of just over 30 of the most influential posts in the UK that have never yet been held by a woman, ranging from chancellor of the exchequer and mayor of London to head of the civil service, archbishop of Canterbury and head of the CBI. If nearly half of cabinet ministers and half of the supreme court justices in Rwanda are women, surely the UK can do better than this.