Which countries have the highest proportion of women in the their national parliaments? With International Women's Day occurring on Sunday, Rwanda is the world's greatest success story when it comes to female-run institutions. In fact, the small African country is the only place in the world boasting more female MPs than male ones - 64 percent of its parliament is female.
How has Rwanda opened up this massive gap with the rest of the world? Globally, about 22 percent of all elected parliamentary seats go to women. After the Rwandan genocide, 70 percent of the country's surviving population was female while a quota requiring 30 percent of political candidates to be women also made a considerable impact. Alongside that, a circle of determined women managed to bring about the massive change that led to such high parliamentary participation for women.
How do other countries compare? The United States is way down in 72nd position worldwide with just 20 percent of government seats held by women. The tiny Principality of Andorra, perched high in the Pyrennees mountains between Spain and France, comes second with the gender of its MPs split 50-50. One of America's neighbors, Cuba, comes in third - just under 49 percent of MPs there are women.
*Click below to enlarge (charted by Statista)
