The line graph compares the proportion of women working as a parliament’s member in Germany, Italy, Frace, UK and Belgium between 2000 and 2012.
Overall, the percentage of female MPs in all of the aforementioned nations followed an upward trend over the course of time, with Italy reaching the peak of the whole graph in 2012.
Over the entire duration of the study, the figures for Germany, Italy and France share a similar pattern. In the 2000-2008 period, the highest percentage of female members of parliament was witnessed in Germany (precisely 35%), followed by that of Italy at more or less 33%, while the number for France was approximately 29%, ranking third. Throughout the remainder of the period, the proportion of women in Italy’s parliament rose dramatically to nearly 40%, which was its highest point and surpassed Germany’s peak.
During the same time frame, the data of Belgium showed some variation, which increased gradually from 17% in 2000 to roughly 24% in 2008, before experiencing a slight dip in the following 4 years. Ever being the lowest proportion over the 8-year period, the number of female MPs in the UK grew rapidly from almost 3% at the beginning of the research to around 23% by the year 2012, which was exactly equal to that of Belgium.