The Inter-Parliamentary Union tracks women’s representation in the world’s Parliaments on an ongoing basis. You can see the latest stats here.

The top 10 ranking countries are: (10) Mozambique, (9) Argentina, (8-) Spain, (8-) Cuba, (7) Netherlands, (6) Denmark, (5) Finland, (4) Norway, (3) Costa Rica, (2) Sweden and (1) Rwanda. South Africa is 14th, the UK is 51st, and the USA 67th. Afghanistan is 25th.

The global average is. See global stats here.

In 1985, 189 governments committed to ensuring women’s equal access to and full participation in power structures and decision-making in government. Since 1985, this has seen a 0.6% increase annually. At this rate, it will take 72 years to achieve this goal!!

But some countries are doing better than others. Spain, for example, has recently moved up this list quite dramatically - see a report below.

Spain’s “surprise” Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has declared his determination to make his mark as Spain’s “feminist” prime minister. He demonstrated his seriousness very soon after his election 2 years ago by naming women to eight of his government’s 16 senior Cabinet positions, including the post of deputy prime minister.

Within days of taking office, Zapatero tackled what he called Spain’s “worst shame”, that is domestic violence against women. During the right-wing dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco, it was legal for husbands to “discipline” their wives by beating them. Three decades after Franco’s death, the problem still persists. But under “zero tolerance” laws that went into effect in 2005, police are required to act swiftly after a complaint, and abusive men face imprisonment. Spanish judges also are experimenting with electronic tagging to keep abusers away from their victims.

Zapatero has also taken on that most patriarchal of all Spanish institutions, the Roman Catholic Church. He upset the Spanish bishops and the Vatican by liberalizing the laws on divorce and abortion. He also gave the go-ahead for same-sex marriages and stem cell research. His latest goal is new legislation requiring that neither sex make up more than 60% of any party’s election candidates. The bill also calls for Spanish companies that do business with the government to appoint women to 40% of the positions on their corporate boards.

In trying to increase the presence of women in the highest echelons of the business world, Spain is following the example of Norway, which earlier this year became the first European country to mandate that 40% of the board members of the country’s large corporations be women. But unlike the Spanish proposal, which sets a target of eight years to comply and would punish noncompliance with the loss of government contracts, the Norwegian law, which went into effect in January, gives companies two years to comply and will punish noncompliance with the disbandment of the company.