Sophia Network

Laura Chinchilla - joining a tiny club of women world leaders

Earlier this week, Laura Chinchilla was elected as Costa Rica's first female president, bringing the number of female world leaders to 13.

She joins:

• Johanna Sigurdardottir, Prime Minister of Iceland
• Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany
• Jadranka Kosor, Prime Minister of Croatia
• Dalia Grybauskaitė, President of Lithuania
• Tarja Halonen, President of Finland
• Mary McAleese, President of Ireland
• Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of Liberia
• Michelle Bachelet Jeria, President of Chile
• Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, President of Argentina
• Sheikh Hasina Wazed, Prime Minister of Bangladesh
• Maria Macapagal-Arroyo, President of the Philippines
• and Doris Leuthard, President of the Swiss Confederation for 2010 (to be fair this role is seen as first among equals and the whole Swiss Federal Council is considered the Head of State but there are so few women world leaders, let's give her a moment of glory!)

They join former female presidents and prime ministers on the Council of World Women Leaders, whose aim is to 'promote good governance and enhance the experience of democracy globally by increasing the number, effectiveness, and visibility of women who lead at the highest levels in their countries'.

The next Prime Minister of the UK will be male, whatever the outcome of this years general election, but perhaps the number of female MPs will increase from the rather paltry 19%. One of the concerns of the anti-suffragists towards the end of the 19th century was that if women were given the vote, they would take over Parliament as there are generally more women than men in the population. They needn't have worried.

But Brighton will definitely be getting a female MP as all the candidates for the main parties are women: Nancy Platts for Labour, Caroline Lucas for the Greens,  Charlotte Vere for the Conservatives and Juliet Williams for the Lib Dems - the first all-female parliamentary election according to the Brighton Argus

Conservative women

Chloe Smith is now the UK's youngest MP having won the Norwich North byelection. She is also a welcome addition to the ranks of female Conservative MPs. Around 19 per cent of our MPs are women at the moment, but if the Conservatives win the next general election as seems likely, that proportion could well go down rather than up. In his leadership acceptance speech four years ago, David Cameron  promised to change the 'scandalous under-representation of women in the Conservative party'. The Observer has an interesting article on the progress that has been made since then, complete with pictures of some of the women who will stand at the next general election - because after all what they look like is far more important than what they would do if they were elected.

The UK is 51st in the world rankings of proportion of women in parliament, way behind Iraq, Afghanistan and Eritrea. Rwanda and Sweden are the countries closest to the 50/50 split. The Fawcett Society website has a section on women in politics, including an article on why women's representation matters.