Women’s Power Index Shows Stalled Progress for Women’s Political Participation

The Women and Foreign Policy program’s most recent update of the “Women’s Power Index” ranks 193 United Nations (UN) member states on their progress toward gender parity in political participation. It analyzes the proportion of women who serve as heads of state or government, in cabinets, in national legislatures, as candidates for national legislatures, and in local government bodies, and visualizes the gender gap in political representation.  

Over the past year global progress toward gender parity in political representation has remained flat at 29 on the 100-point aggregate scale employed in which a 100-point score represents gender parity. The number of countries that are halfway or more to parity has remained the same. Twenty-eight countries exceeded fifty in their gender parity score, including Canada, Dominica, Moldova, and the United Kingdom in the past year. Mozambique, Peru, Rwanda, and Senegal fell below that halfway to parity mark in the past year. The U.S. gender parity score is slightly above the global average at 35. Iceland has maintained its position in first place, with a score of 86, Mexico and Andorra occupy second and third place, with scores of 75 and 73, respectively. 

Progress in women’s political leadership at the national level has been stalling recently. Since the end of World War II, 82 of the 193 countries have elected a female head of state or government, with the most progress coming in the past two decades. Eleven countries elected their first woman into high office during the 2000s, twenty-five in the 2010s, and seventeen thus far in the 2020s. Most recently, Namibia elected its first woman president, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, in 2025, and Mexico elected its first woman president, Claudia Sheinbaum, in 2024. Out of 193 countries: 

• Twenty-five UN member states currently have a female head of state or government – This is a decrease from March 2024, when there were twenty-six UN member states with a woman leader. Currently three countries (Barbados, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Iceland) have both a woman head of state and head of government. Vjosa Osmani of Kosovo, which is not recognized by the UN, has kept its leader, who has served since April 2021.  

• Nine UN member states have 50 percent or more women in the national cabinet, which is a notable 40 percent decrease from fifteen countries in the last quarter 2024. 

• Six UN member states have at least 50 percent women in the national legislature – This has remained steady since the previous updates. 

• But the number of women elected to legislatures has fallen; fewer women were elected in two-thirds of the parliamentary elections held in 2024, based on Inter-Parliamentary Union data. 

The interactive presentation includes the following features: 

• a dynamic global map displaying each country’s indicators for gender parity in representation 

• a searchable list of current female heads of state or government 

• a customizable table to compare data on gender parity from different nations and regions

Explore the Index here>>