Women still under-represented in European politics, despite improving trend / Article

In 2025, women held 33.6% of the seats in national parliaments across the EU, marking a 5.4 percentage points (pp) increase compared with 2015. Latvia fared slightly worse than this at 31% – despite famously having more women than men than anywhere else, as a proportion of the population. 

Finland (46.0%), Sweden (44.8%) and Denmark (44.7%) had the highest shares of female representatives in parliament in 2025, while Cyprus (14.3%), Hungary (15.6%) and Romania (22.0%) had the lowest.

Compared with 2015, all EU countries recorded increases in the share of female representatives, except Germany (-3.5 pp). Among the EU countries in which the share of women in parliament rose, 4 reported increases above 10 pp: Latvia (+19.0 pp), Malta (+14.8 pp), France (+10.9 pp) and Czechia (+10.6 pp).

When it comes to women in government, Latvia does a bit better. Across Europe, women held 31.9% of national government seats, an increase of 4.2 pp compared with 2015. In Latvia the share was 36% – up from a lowly 17% in 2015. It’s also worth recording that Latvia’s Prime Minister and Parliamentary speaker are both women.

The share of women in government was highest in Finland (60.0%). Parity was achieved in Sweden (50.0%), and in France, almost half of the members of national governments were female (48.6%). 

In contrast, Hungary had no women in its national government, Romania had only 10.5% and Czechia 11.8%. 

In most EU countries, the share of women in national governments has grown since 2015.  Finland recorded the largest increase (+26.7 pp), followed by Lithuania (+20.4 pp) and Estonia (+17.5 pp). Decreases were registered in 6 EU countries: Romania (-24.5 pp), Slovenia (-7.7 pp), Czechia (-5.8 pp), the Netherlands (-4.2 pp), Belgium (-1.1 pp) and Poland (-0.8 pp). 

The European Union’s parliaments do better than the United States Congress where women currently hold 28% of seats.

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