In 2025, women held 33.6% of the seats in national parliaments across the EU, marking a 5.4 percentage points (pp) increase compared with 2015.
Finland (46.0%), Sweden (44.8%) and Denmark (44.7%) had the highest shares of female representatives in 2025, while Cyprus (14.3%), Hungary (15.6%) and Romania (22.0%) had the lowest.
Compared with 2015, all EU countries recorded increases in the share of female representatives, except Germany (-3.5 pp). Among the EU countries in which the share of women in parliament rose, 4 reported increases above 10 pp: Latvia (+19.0 pp), Malta (+14.8 pp), France (+10.9 pp) and Czechia (+10.6 pp).
Source dataset: sdg_05_50; data provider: European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE)
More women also in national governments
Also, more members of national governments were female in 2025. Women held 31.9% of national government seats, an increase of 4.2 pp compared with 2015.
The share of women in government was highest in Finland (60.0%). Parity was achieved in Sweden (50.0%), and in France, almost half of the members of national governments were female (48.6%).
In contrast, Hungary had no women in its national government, Romania had only 10.5% and Czechia 11.8%.
In most EU countries, the share of women in national governments has grown since 2015. Finland recorded the largest increase (+26.7 pp), followed by Lithuania (+20.4 pp) and Estonia (+17.5 pp). Decreases were registered in 6 EU countries: Romania (-24.5 pp), Slovenia (-7.7 pp), Czechia (-5.8 pp), the Netherlands (-4.2 pp), Belgium (-1.1 pp) and Poland (-0.8 pp).
Source dataset: sdg_05_50; data provider: European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE)
This article is part of a series of articles published to mark International Women’s Day. Please check our other articles as well:
For more information
- Thematic section on the Sustainable Development Goals
- Database on the Sustainable Development Goals
- Thematic section on equality and non-discrimination
- Webinar on gender statistics
- Podcast episode on looking at data on women in research and innovation
Methodological notes
- The data come from the Gender Statistics Database of the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE). They refer to the fourth quarter of the specified year.
- The national parliament is the national legislative assembly. The indicator refers to both chambers (lower and upper houses), where relevant. The count of members of a parliament includes the president/speaker/leader of the parliament.
- The national government is the executive body with the authority to govern a country or a state. Members of government include both senior ministers (having a seat in the cabinet or council of ministers, including the prime minister) and junior ministers (not having a seat in the cabinet). In some countries, state secretaries (or the national equivalent) are considered junior ministers within the government (with no seat in the cabinet), but in other countries, they are not considered members of the government. A detailed breakdown of government members included in this indicator is available in the metadata of EIGE’s Gender Statistics Database.
