GENEVA, March 4: Nearly one in five parliamentarians worldwide is now a woman, a survey showed today — but far fewer are making it to the top government posts.

The analysis by the Inter-parliamentary Union in Geneva looked at 78 chambers of parliament across 63 countries, and found an all-time high of 17.7 per cent female representation.

It put that down to increasing use of quotas world-wide, but pointed out that women were still finding it hard to break through into the executive branches of government.

“Quotas of temporary special measures remain key. In those countries that used some type of electoral quota, the average representation of women was 19.3 per cent, as opposed to 14.7 per cent for those countries without quotas,” said the IPU in a statement.

However, more than such measures are needed to scale higher positions.

“Unlike in some parliaments, where different measures exist to secure seats for women legislators, in the executive branch of government it is often sheer political will that matters,” said the IPU. The record 17.7 per cent figure compares with just 11.3 per cent in 1995.

Kyrgyzstan made the most significant progress — advancing from no women in parliament to 25.6 per cent after the 2007 elections, thanks to the introduction of a proportional representation system which required political parties to put up at least 30 per cent of women candidates.Nordic countries remained the leaders in this aspect, with women making up 41.1 per cent of parliamentarians in the region.

However, overall, women are making a slow advance in executive positions, holding 16.1 per cent of ministerial portfolios, up just 2 per cent from 2005.

At the top end of the table, over half (58 per cent) of ministers in Finland and 55.6 per cent in Norway are women.

Grenada, which ranked third, had executive posts which were split equally.

At the other end of the scale, 13 countries have no women ministers.

Those who made it to head-of-state positions were even fewer — of 150 heads of state in 2008, only seven are women.

The Interparliamentary Union, founded in 1889, has more than 140 member states and works to coordinate and promote parliamentary democracy.—AFP