A record number of women are running in Finland’s general election but the Nordic pioneer in women’s suffrage is still short of fairly matching the gender composition of its voters.
(Bloomberg) — A record number of women are running in Finland’s general election but the Nordic pioneer in women’s suffrage is still short of fairly matching the gender composition of its voters.
Women make up 42.9% of all candidates in the April 2 vote, up from the 42% in the election four years earlier, according to data published on Wednesday by Statistics Finland. In comparison, 51.8% of the eligible voters are women.
For candidates set by parties currently in parliament, the ratio of women is somewhat better at 47.5%.
Finland was the first country in Europe to give women both the right to vote and stand as candidate, in 1906, and followed only New Zealand and Australia globally. Currently, all five parties in the cabinet of Prime Minister Sanna Marin, 37, are led by women.
“Women’s share of parliamentary candidates soared in the 1970s and passed the 40% threshold for the first time in 1991. It then stayed at around 40% until rising again four years ago, and now,” said Minna Wallenius, a senior statistician at the statistics office.
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