In 2024, women held one-third (33.4%) of the seats in national parliaments across the EU, marking a 5.6 percentage points (pp) increase compared with 2014.
Sweden (45.6%), Finland (45.5%) and Denmark (44.7%) had the highest shares of female representatives, while Cyprus (14.3%), Hungary (14.6%) and Romania (19.5%) had the lowest.
Compared with 2014, 3 EU countries increased the share of female representatives by 10 pp or more: Malta (+14.9 pp), Latvia (+13.0 pp) and France (+10.3 pp).
Source dataset: sdg_05_50, data provider: European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE)
More women in national governments in 2024
In 2024, women held 35.1% of national government seats, an increase of 7.4 percentage points compared with 2014 (27.7%).
The share of women in government was highest in Finland (60.0%). In 3 other EU countries, at least half of the members of national governments were female: Belgium (55.0%), Estonia (50.0%) and France (50.0%).
In contrast, Hungary had no women in its national government at all, while Czechia had 5.9% and Croatia 10.5% of female government members.
In most EU countries, the share of women in national governments grew since 2014. Belgium recorded the largest increase (+32.8 pp), followed by Portugal (+25.7 pp) and Lithuania (+24.9 pp).
Source dataset: sdg_05_50, data provider: European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE)
This article is part of a series of articles published to mark International Women’s Day. Please check our other articles as well:
For more information
- Statistics Explained article on gender equality in the EU – 10 years in review
- Thematic section on the Sustainable Development Goals
- Database on the Sustainable Development Goals
- Webinar on gender statistics
- She Figures 2024 – interactive report
Methodological notes
- The data comes from the Gender Statistics Database of the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE). It refers to the fourth quarter of the specified year.
- The national parliament is the national legislative assembly. The indicator refers to both chambers (lower and upper house), where relevant. The count of members of a parliament includes the president/speaker/leader of the parliament.
- The national government is the executive body with authority to govern a country or a state. Members of government include both senior ministers (having a seat in the cabinet or council of ministers, including the prime minister) and junior ministers (not having a seat in the cabinet). In some countries state-secretaries (or the national equivalent) are considered as junior ministers within the government (with no seat in the cabinet), but in other countries they are not considered as members of the government. A detailed breakdown of government members included in this indicator is available in the metadata of EIGE’s Gender Statistics Database.