Women Parliamentarians in the Commonwealth

One in five Parliamentarians in Commonwealth countries are women

Rwanda has registered a 250% increase (from 14 to 49 out of 80 MPs) over the last two decades in the number of female MPs as a proportion of total MPs, the largest improvement recorded by any Commonwealth country in this period. On average, 19.5% of MPs in the Commonwealth countries are women. Data for 2018 shows the proportion of women parliamentarians is higher than the Commonwealth average for 22 countries. The countries that made the slowest progress in reducing the gender imbalance among parliamentarians in the same period are Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Kiribati, Kingdom of Eswatini and Tonga.