With ‘mega election’ year over, what does 2025 look like for women in politics?
Story by Leila Hawkins
Photo: Claudia Sheinbaum, President of Mexico. By EneasMx, August 2024 /CC BY-SA 4.0
Elections took place in more than 60 countries last year, which equates to almost half of the world’s population going to the polls. While a few countries made history by electing their first woman president, women’s political representation has decreased overall — as of January 2025, there are just 29 countries with female heads of state.
The election that made the most headlines was, of course, in the US: with Donald Trump’s return the country continued its run as one of the few nations that prides itself on being a democracy yet has never elected a female president.
While this caused a significant degree of shock, if we dig a little deeper it’s not that surprising. As of July 2024, women held just one-third of all elected positions in the US, and in fact, the number of women’s candidacies dropped at nearly every level of office last year.
Globally, the US isn’t doing well when it comes to women in parliamentary positions, ranking 63rd out of 146 countries.
But it’s not all about the US. Let’s take a look at the rest of the world.
The Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) publishes rankings of the percentage of women in national parliaments each month. According to its data, women make up just 27% of MPs worldwide. And the countries with the most gender-balanced governments may surprise you.
The graph shows the top 10 countries with the highest percentage of seats held by women in lower parliamentary chambers, as of January 1, 2025. Topping the list is Rwanda with 63.8%, followed by Cuba and Nicaragua with 55.7% and 55% respectively. Mexico, Andorra and the UAE all have 50% and above, which means that worldwide just six countries have achieved gender parity in the lower chambers (in other words, members of parliament directly elected by the public).
Why does this matter?
Of course, women candidates should not be elected on the basis of gender alone. However there are studies showing that diverse political leadership improves economic performance and is beneficial to peacemaking efforts.
There is also evidence that countries with a higher share of women in parliament are more likely to implement laws on issues that most directly impact women, like childcare and tackling gender-based violence (if you enjoy data analysis, this comprehensive study has a deep dive on the links between women’s representation in parliament and gender-sensitive policies).
There are also many arguments pointing to the links between gender and empathy — some rooted in neuroscience — with Jacinda Ardern’s leadership frequently held up as an example. But if we consider Margaret Thatcher and Giorgia Meloni for example, it’s clear that women leaders run the ideological gamut.
Regardless, given that women make up half the population, it’s only fair they should be represented in policy-making and leadership roles in equal numbers to men.
Where did women make gains and losses in 2024?
For the first time in its history, fewer women were elected to the European Parliament in last year’s elections, which now has a gender split of 61.3% men vs 38.6% women. Specific committees now have a large gender disparity, such as the Foreign Affairs Committee with only 14 of its 79 members being women. Ursula von der Leyen held on to her role as president of the European Commission, however.
The Pacific Island nation of Tuvalu lost its only female member of parliament, and now has no women in government at all, indicative of the Pacific Islands overall which have the lowest proportion of female members of parliament in the world at just 8%.
There were notable wins in Mongolia, where women’s representation jumped from 10% to 25% after a constitutional amendment in 2023 introduced a mandatory 30% candidate quota for women; Maia Sandu was re-elected as president of Moldova, securing a second term after becoming the country’s first female president in 2020; and Iceland, long-regarded as one the best places in the world for gender equality, voted in its second female president with entrepreneur Halla Tómasdóttir.
Meanwhile in the UK, the Labour party won its general elections with a clear landslide, and formed a cabinet with the highest number of female ministers in Britain’s political history. Rachel Reeves became the country’s first female chancellor.
Claudia Sheinbaum took office as Mexico’s first female president in October, after campaigning on a platform of progressive stances on abortion and women’s rights. Her win was particularly momentous for a country marred by its high number of femicides.
In Namibia, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah also made history becoming the country’s first female president with more than 57% of the vote. Nandi-Ndaitwah has been involved in politics since the age of 14 when she joined Swapo, the liberation movement fighting South Africa’s white-minority rule. However, as mentioned above, having a woman head of state does not guarantee liberal or progressive policies. Nandi-Ndaitwah is against same-sex marriage, and has gone on the record as saying there is a “homosexuality agenda” in Namibia’s sex education system.
What’s the outlook for 2025?
Despite these significant wins only 14.5% of countries head a woman head of state.
Against a backdrop of rising online misogyny and gendered disinformation campaigns, certain parts of the world are currently in the grip of a wave of anti-DEI rhetoric.
However the introduction of quotas has helped Mexico and Rwanda achieve two of the most gender-balanced governments in the world, to name two examples. While quotas like these have proven successful in getting closer to achieving gender parity in governance, to avoid a backlash policymakers will need to pay attention to areas where men and women are diverging. Regardless of where they stand on the political spectrum, their role this year and beyond should be to increase women’s representation while making sure they are creating political systems that work for everyone, regardless of gender.
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