1 more than 40%
2 20% to 39%
3 10% to 19%
4 1% to 9%
5 None
6 No Data
0 No Data
1 Less than 10%
2 10-15%
3 15-20%
4 20-25%
5 More than 25%

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=

Adolescent Birth Rate

What does it mean ?

This indicator represents the number of babies born to girls and women aged 15-19 each year. It can be understood as the expected number of girls that will become pregnant between the ages of 15-19 each year out of 1,000 girls in that age group.

Why does it matter ?

In countries where child marriage is common, it is also likely that a high adolescent fertility rate will result. The marriage of girls followed by multiple childbearing either in early or late teen years is a violation of human and reproductive rights, as well as a missed opportunity to improve levels of female literacy, education and the economic progress that is associated with female participation in the labour force.

How is it collected ?

A national survey was undertaken in each country from a representative sample of households where women and girls were asked how many children they have given birth to and when they occurred. Using data from girls aged 15-19, a fertility rate was calculated by adding the number of births within the year before the survey, and dividing by the number of girls in the survey aged 15-19.

World Population Prospects: The 2015 Revision https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Download/Standard/Fertility/