Bangladesh stands eighth among the Asian countries in terms of women’s parliamentary representation with women occupying 20 percent of the seats in the national parliament.
Nepal leads Asia in women’s political representation in the legislature with women occupying 30 percent seats in the Constituent Assembly of the country in 2015, according to data compiled by the Asian Development Bank.
The Millennium Development Goals Report (MDG Report 2015) of the UN indicates that women have gained ground in parliamentary representation in nearly 90 percent of the 174 countries within past 20 years.
The average proportion of women in parliament has nearly doubled during the period. In Asia, the situation has also improved in past one decade.
The Philippines stood at the second place in Asia with 27 percent women representation in the House of Representatives of the country.
In Vietnam’s National Assembly, which is the highest representative body of the people and the highest State authority in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, women representation is 24 percent.
Lao People’s Democratic Republic bordering Myanmar, Cambodia, China, Thailand, and Vietnam is not far behind other countries of the region. The proportion of seats held by women in National Assembly of the country is 25 percent.
The percentage of women in Singapore Parliament has improved in past one decade. As per latest data, women occupy 23 percent seats in the parliament of the country, while in China it is 24 percent. Although, in 2014, 23.4 percent of parliament seats in China were held by women highlighting a slight improvement.
Pakistan has 21 percent seats for women in the country’s Senate.
Since 1996 India has been trying to adopt a constitutional amendment to reserve 33 percent seats for women in the Lower House of the Parliament but political parties do not have a consensus about the issue.
India has only 12 percent representation of women in the parliament while global average for women in parliament stands at 22.4 percent pushing India’s rank lower than Indonesia and Mongolia which has 17 percent and 15 percent women representation respectively. India, Malaysia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Thailand have the lowest female political representation.
Source; The Daily Star
