| 1 | more than 40% |
| 2 | 20% to 39% |
| 3 | 10% to 19% |
| 4 | 1% to 9% |
| 5 | None |
| 6 | No Data |
| 0 | Less than 25 |
| 1 | 25 to 49 |
| 2 | 50 to 74 |
| 3 | 75 to 99 |
| 4 | 100 to 149 |
| 5 | 150 and over |
| 6 | No Data |
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Making Women's Voices Heard
What does it mean ?
The proportion of parliamentary seats held by women refers to the number of seats held be women members in single or lower chambers of national parliaments, divided by the total number of all occupied seats.
Why does it matter ?
MDG Goal 3 aimed to promote gender equality and empower women. One critical way of achieving this goal is to ensure women’s voices are heard at the national level when making policy decisions that affect them.
This indicator represents the proportion of parliamentary seats held by women for each country. The aim of this indicator is to show that countries which have greater representation of women by women are on the way to achieving gender equality and female empowerment.
How is it collected ?
National parliaments can be bicameral or unicameral. This indicator covers the single chamber in unicameral parliaments and the lower chamber in bicameral parliaments. It does not cover the upper chamber of bicameral parliaments. Seats are usually won by members in general parliamentary elections. Seats may also be filled by nomination, appointment, indirect election, rotation of members and by-election.
Seats refer to the number of parliamentary mandates, or the number of members of parliament.
The proportion of seats held by women in national parliament is derived by dividing the total number of seats occupied by women by the total number of seats in parliament.
There is no weighting or normalising of statistics.
Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) www.ipu.org. Data represent most recently available year, 2012 – 2015. http://databank.worldbank.org/data/reports.aspx?source=2&series=SG.GEN.PARL.ZS&country=
A Mother Too Soon in 2015
For all too many girls around the world, pregnancy happens when they are themselves still children. However the repercussions of early motherhood can have a disastrous impact on a young woman's life. Women who give birth between the ages of 15-19 are twice as likely to die from pregnancy and birth related causes than women in their 20s, and for girls aged under 15 the risk is five times higher that women in their 20s.
Babies under one with adolescent mothers are 50% more likely to die than those with mothers in their 20s, and the younger the mother, the higher the risk.
Potential disadvantages are not just limited to health. When girls start having babies in their early teens, they miss out on school, which means they also miss opportunities to escape poverty.
As a result of unprotected sex, teenage girls are also at high risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases including HIV. Young girls may feel unable to ask to use condoms – and in many cases they may be forced into sex. In both Malawi and Ghana around a third of girls reported that they were "not willing at all" during their first sexual experience.
Mothers under 16
In many countries girls are often married and bear their first child before the age of 16. This is particularly prevalent in Sub-Saharan Africa, but also in parts of Asia and Latin America. These very young pregnancies, which carry the greatest risks for both mother and baby, are concentrated in those countries where services are poorest.
No attribution
