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Women’s Power Index: CFR Gender Parity Score Stalls, in Warning Sign for Women’s Political Participation 

Women looking at their mobile phones walk past electoral campaign panel boards with posters of Paris mayoral election candidates ahead of the upcoming mayoral elections in Paris, France, March 6, 2026.
Women looking at their mobile phones walk past electoral campaign panel boards with posters of Paris mayoral election candidates ahead of the upcoming mayoral elections in Paris, France, March 6, 2026. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe

By experts and staff

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Experts

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  • Noël James
    Research Associate, Women and Foreign Policy

The Women and Foreign Policy program’s most recent update of the “Women’s Power Index” ranks 193 United Nations (UN) member states’ records on gender parity in political participation. This digital interactive tracks five indicators: the proportion of women who serve as heads of state or government, in cabinets, in national legislatures, as candidates for national legislatures, and in local government bodies. It also calculates an overall gender parity score for each country. The 2026 edition of the Women’s Power Index confirms a slowing trend of progress. 

Countries with women as head of state or government: Twenty-six UN member states have a female head of state or government (excluding monarchs, interim leaders and members of collective leadership bodies). That is two more than last year, but lower than the all-time high of thirty countries in 2023. Women today lead 13.5 percent of UN member states. In terms of the number of leaders, Iceland and Trinidad and Tobago have women as both head of state and head of government. Counting President Vjosa Osmani of Kosovo, which is not recognized by the UN, a total of twenty-nine women serve as president or prime minister.   

In 2025, several women leaders left office: Sandra Mason (Barbados), Željka Cvijanović (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Katerina Sakellaropoulou (Greece), Xiomara Castro (Honduras), Dina Boluarte (Peru), Fiame Naomi Mata’afaa (Samoa), Paetongtarn Shinawatra (Thailand), and Victoire Tomegah Dogbe (Togo). Looking ahead, Laura Fernández Delgado, elected president of Costa Rica, will be inaugurated in May and several women are candidates in upcoming elections. 

Cabinet: Women comprise only 22.4 percent of cabinet members, down from 23.3 percent last year. Fourteen UN member states have 50 percent or more women in their national cabinets: Namibia, Finland, Nicaragua, Colombia, Australia, Sweden, Canada, Ecuador, Germany, Guatemala, Iceland, Seychelles, Spain, and the United Kingdom. This compares to a high point of fifteen countries with half or more women in cabinets in 2024.  

Women leaders continued to make progress toward greater gender balance in cabinets. In Namibia, the second country in Africa to democratically elect a female president, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah has appointed women to 64 percent of her cabinet positions, an increase from 37 percent. Under Lithuanian Prime Minister Inga Ruginienė, the percentage of women cabinet members increased to 36 percent. 

National Legislature: Seven UN member states have at least 50 percent women in their national legislatures, marking a small increase from the six member states that had parity over the past three years. Bolivia, the latest country to reach parity in its legislature, did so with a gender quota law requiring that women make up 50 percent of candidates and proportional representation electoral rules. Globally, as of January 1, 2026, women held 27.5 percent of parliamentary seats, continuing the slowest pace of growth since 2017.   

Parity score trends: The faltering progress in most indicators is reflected in the WPI global gender parity score, which remains at 29, on our aggregate scale of indicators where a 100-point score represents gender parity. Only 29 countries out of 193 are halfway to parity (i.e., a score of 50), a drop from 30. The top three countries, Iceland, Mexico, and Andorra, maintained their rankings. 

As the three trend graphs below show, the outlook for women’s political participation is at best cloudy. Why does it matter? As the latest academic research cited in this year’s edition of the Women’s Power Index shows, women’s representation contributes significantly to enhanced peace, security, stability, and other dimensions of social well-being.