GENEVA - Ten years after a landmark world conference on women was held with great fanfare in Beijing, women represent just 15.7 percent of parliamentarians worldwide, an annual report said. In the Arab world the percentage of women deputies has doubled in five years to 6.5 percent, but it continues to lag far behind other regions, the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) said. The annual statistics show "steady but slow" progress since the Beijing talks when women represented 11.3 percent of national assembly members. "Improvement is still well below the target of gender parity in the parliaments of the world," said Chilean Senator Sergio Paez, president of the IPU which links 140 parliaments.

While the Nordic countries have the highest regional ranking, followed by the Americas, the low number of women members of parliament in the Arab world continues to require attention, it said. A few countries (Morocco, Jordan and Tunisia) accounted for much of the regional improvement, but the upward trend was likely to continue with the January 30 election in Iraq and "political reforms in a number of countries", it added. Rwanda topped the chart for the second year in a row -- with 48.8 percent of women in the lower house and 34.6 percent in the upper house -- while Sweden remained in second place, IPU said. Sweden also had the most women ministers, representing 52.4 percent, followed by Spain with 50 percent, it added.

"This makes Sweden virtually the only country in the world that has fulfilled the principle of gender parity in politics," it said. However, women continue to encounter "serious obstacles" on the way to the top positions of government. The number of female heads of state or government actually declined to 4.2 percent today from 4.7 percent in 2000, according to the IPU.

Reuters