GENEVA So the Swiss have joined an elite club by having more women than men in their government - no mean feat considering women only gained the vote in Switzerland in 1971.

They could look to Spain to see what the future might hold. Spain's socialist prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, began as he meant to go on when he appointed his first government in 2004, which was made up of eight men and eight women (if you count him out). When he won a second term, in 2008, his new cabinet was nine women and eight men, a situation that still exists. And the women don't just hold token posts the deputy prime minister and the finance minister are both women. And the minister of defence, Carme Chacon, has had a baby on the job.

But does a balanced cabinet achieve anything more than predictable complaints about hairstyles and “the best man for the job”? After all, women are hardly numerous in the upper echelons of other parts of Spanish society. The government has appointed only four women to the 19 key posts of government delegate to Spain's semi-autonomous regions. And only eight occupy the 44 spots on the scale below.

And, even if a quarter of the directors of state-owned companies are now women, those in stock-market-listed companies remain at just one in 10.

Nonetheless, the Spanish government has produced women-friendly policies to match its composition. A new law freeing up abortion and another that eased divorce were both longstanding petitions.

And one of Spain's priorities during its EU presidency in the first half of this year was to get combined action on domestic violence.

And things are getting better in business. The number of women directors at listed companies has increased three-fold since 2003 (thanks, partly, to a law calling for parity by 2015).

The Spanish case would seem to prove that if you want absolute parity you must either guarantee it by law or impose it by prime-ministerial decree - starting with the cabinet.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service