UNITED NATIONS, Mar 07 (APP):Ahead of International Women’s Day on Monday, the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), a U.N. partner, has said that the global representation of women in Parliament reached a record high in 2020, but progress in this regard is “still excruciatingly slow”. “It gives me great pleasure to announce that for the first time, women now account for more than a quarter of parliamentarians worldwide”, Martin Chungong of IPU, the global organization of national parliaments, said in launching its latest report at the UN Office in Geneva. “The global average of women in parliament has now reached 25.5 per cent,” he said. The IPU has been tracking women’s participation in parliament for decades, allowing it to measure progress and setbacks. “While we celebrate and welcome this all-time high, we feel that progress is painstakingly, or even excruciatingly, slow”, Chungong said. “At the current rate, it will take another 50 years before we can achieve gender parity in parliament. And of course, we all agree that this is not tenable, it’s not acceptable”. Following elections in 2020, the global proportion of women in parliament increased by 0.6 points when compared with the previous year. The IPU chief singled out Rwanda, … Continue reading Global representation of women in Parliament reaches ‘all-time high’: Report