
Only 120 years ago women first gained the right to vote in national elections, and actually New Zealand was the pioneer. To celebrate this anniversary, a special event will be held from 27 to 29 November 2013 at the European Parliament in Brussels.
Women in Parliaments Global Forum and the European Parliament have joined forces to organise the Forum’s 2013 Annual Summit, the first conference ever to which all female Parliamentarians in the world have been invited. Several Nobel Prize Winners, Heads of Government, and European Commissioners will be among the key speakers at the event.
Awards will be granted to the countries having fared best in terms of women’s political empowerment and closing the gender gap, based on the rankings of the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report.

Countries as distant and different from each other as Norway, Lesotho and Bolivia are among this year’s winners.
Obviously we could not miss such an event and will be there with a series of background notes on the countries to be granted the awards. Moreover, we’ve thought up a graphical presentation of up-to-date statistical data related to Women in politics, business and public administration in the EU.
You can thus get to know better the specifics of each award winner including:
- Algeria and its new highly efficient quotas;
- Bolivia not afraid of indigenous female ministers;
- Canada with more obstacles to gender equality than one would expect;
- Iceland strong as always;
- Israel where modern laws are not enough to do the job;
- Jamaica with a female prime minister and … little more;
- Lesotho with a small territory, but a large space for women;
- Mongolia doing much better after the most recent parliamentary election;
- New Zealand once the place to be for women, now slowing down a bit;
- Norway where even key portfolios are held by female ministers;
- Rwanda once fearful, now impressive, and
- United Arab Emirates whose successes have been overshadowed by extramarital sex charges against a rape victim.
Download all reports in one document.
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Israel: corrections and additions: The first arab woman in the Knesset was Houssnia Gebara, elected in 1999. She was not re-elected and served one term.
Women also held the position of Minister of Education several times. Both Shulamit Aloni and Yuli Tamir were in the cabinet. This is definitely not a secondary position.
Thank you for your comment. Hussniya Jabara was indeed the first Israeli Arab woman elected to the Knesset, however, we meant to refer to Hanin Zoabi, who was the first woman to be elected from an Arab party’s list. We have amended the text to include the crucial phrase. On your second point, we refer only to the current government. By most prominent ministries, we’re thinking of finance, foreign affairs, internal affairs, national security and defence..