More statistics on women in politics after election results

I found Deborah Russell‘s blog, A Bee of a Certain Age by accident on Twitter and I’m so glad I did.

She stood as a Labour candidate for the first time in the Rangitikei electorate this year.

It did dampen my spirits a little bit, after my previous post.  It looked like women involvement in election politics grew a little bit by 11.6%.  Ms Russell’s numbers looked a little less impressive.  (this number takes special votes in to account).

We’re down to 38 women in the House, out of 121 MPs. That’s just 31.4% women – the lowest proportion of women in the House since 2002 (graph, txt file).

Here’s the breakdown by party, excluding the one person “parties” both of which are represented by men.

Greens – 7 men, 7 women, 50% women
Maori – 1 man, 1 woman, 50% women
Labour – 20 men, 12 women, 37.5% women
National – 43 men, 17 women, 28% women
New Zealand First – 9 men, 2 women, 18% women

She goes on to point out that 51% of the population are women, but less than a third of our elected representatives in Parliament are women.

And when you put it like that, it makes me wonder how much of a difference women will make in the next three years of government.