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Spain just elected its most feminist parliament ever

The Local Spain
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Spain just elected its most feminist parliament ever
File image of deputies in Spain's Congress. Photo: AFP

The new batch of MPs to take their seats in Spain’s Congress will include more women than ever before - almost but not quite as many as men.

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With all the votes counted on Monday morning, it is now clear that 46.8 percent of elected members of parliament will be women.

There will be 164 women in the lower chamber sitting alongside 186 men – 26 more women than there were in the last legislature.

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The share of the votes to each party according to final results. 

The figure represents the first time that the share of women lawmakers has risen above 40 percent.

It will come as no surprise, considering the make-up of Pedro Sanchez’s cabinet that in fact women outnumber men in the ranks of the PSOE. 64 of the 123 new MPs are women.

But the number of women representing the PP also outnumbers the men in the party. 34 of the 66 conservative deputies are women.

Ciudadanos has 21 female MPs of the 57 representatives chosen for parliament – just 36.8 percent and Unidos Podemos falls short of equality with less than half – 20 out of 42 MPs - being women.  

The far-right Vox party which campaigned using virulent rhetoric against what it dubs "radical feminism" which it believes "criminalises" men counted just 9 women among its 24 MPs.

This is the fifth general election since Spain introduced an equality law requiring a balance of male and female candidates. The 2007 Equality Law brought in by Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero requires that no one sex exceeds the ratio of 60-40.

READ ALSO: Why Spain's feminist movement is in the spotlight ahead of election

 

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