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Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made headlines Wednesday when he announced that half of his Cabinet ministers are female, a decision he justified with the simple explanation that \u201cit\u2019s 2015.\u201d The move won him international praise and more than a few swoons.<\/p>\n
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Canada isn\u2019t the first country to take steps to increase women\u2019s representation in government. The countries with the most female lawmakers have made major strides on issues such as education, labor force participation, and paid leave. Each of the countries below has either a parliament or a ministry that is at least 50% female, while women make up only 19% of the U.S. Congress and only four of Obama\u2019s 15 cabinet members.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe know that companies with more gender balanced leadership teams significantly outperform companies with only men at the helm,\u201d says Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, CEO of Twenty first, a consulting company that focuses in building gender-balanced businesses. \u201cWhy wouldn\u2019t this be even more true at a country level?\u201d Here are a few examples of countries with lots of women in government who are outperforming the U.S. on various levels:<\/p>\n
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Sweden<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong> <\/p>\n Rwanda<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong> <\/p>\n However unhappily it came about, the new female legislations helped pass laws allowing women to own land and open bank accounts. A quota introduced in 2003 mandated that 30% of all government roles be reserved for women, and only women can vote for these women-only seats. Fittingly, it\u2019s women who have felt the benefits. Rwanda now has a lower maternal mortality rate than other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, and 87% of women are in the labor force\u2013 compared to 57% of the women in the United States, according to International Labor Organization data cited in the\u00a0Clinton Foundation\u2019s No Ceilings<\/a>\u00a0Report.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Finland<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong> <\/p>\n So take these two facts as you will: the ministry in Finland is\u00a062% female<\/a>, and they\u2019ve managed to create a public education system that could be the new gold standard. Finnish students far outperformed students from the U.S, U.K., and Russia in all academic areas, and they\u2019ve consistently hovered near the top of academic excellence, according to\u00a0PISA, the international standardized test.\u00a0<\/a>Yet Finnish schools rarely have standardized tests,\u00a0emphasize play over homework<\/a>,\u00a0pay their teachers well,<\/a>and everyone goes to public schools.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The country,\u00a0ranked by some<\/a>\u00a0as the best place to live in the world, now has stellar education, generous paid maternity leave and\u00a0heavily subsidized child care<\/a>\u00a0hardwired into society. And women as a permanent fixture in government. Draw whatever conclusions you want.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cGovernments are meant to represent the people who elect them,\u201d says Wittenberg-Cox. \u201cAnd yet it is only once women gain political power that subjects considered to be \u2018soft\u2019 are dealt with seriously \u2013 from childcare and reproductive rights to education and sustainability.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sadly, these countries are still outliers. Worldwide, parliaments are only22% female, and there are 37 countries\u00a0<\/a>where women make up less than 10% of the government. But if this is what happens in the handful of countries where women are more equally represented, imagine what could happen if other leaders followed Trudeau\u2019s example.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\nThe Swedish ministry is 52% female and their parliament is 43% women. So it shouldn\u2019t be any surprise the Sweden is regularly held up as an example of a paradise for working women. Their public benefits assume a dual-income family where both men and women are working and contributing at home, and as a result they have the\u00a0among the highest female employment in the E.U.<\/a>\u00a0and almost the lowest child poverty. Both parents are entitled to 16 months of paid family leave (to be divided as a couple,) with 13 months of that leave paid at 80% of their income and the rest at a flat rate. Compare that to the U.S. policies, where the absence of paid family leave causes enormous stress for women and families, and often leads women to drop out of the workforce altogether.<\/p>\n
\nIn Rwanda, the parliament is almost 64% female, according to the\u00a0Inter-Parliamentary Union<\/a>, and for tragic reasons. After the country was ripped apart by genocide in 1994, Rwanda found itself with a population that was 70% female, since thousands of men were killed in bloodshed between the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups (of the\u00a0780 judges in the country before the massacre<\/a>, only 20 survived.) Before the genocide, women hold only 10-15% of parliament seats, according to the\u00a0Harvard Kennedy School,\u00a0<\/a>but the massacre of so many men created a power vacuum that Rwandan women quickly filled.<\/p>\n
\nFinland has always been ahead of other countries in female representation \u2014 it was the one of first countries in the world where women had the unrestricted right to vote and run for parliament. And while it\u2019s hard to separate Finland\u2019s extremely progressive policies from the fact that the government has always had more female representation than most, those policies also can\u2019t necessarily be directly attributed to the influence of Finnish women in government.<\/p>\n