Female candidate wins majority in Icelandic election | International News Election News

Voters elected 33 women to the parliament, up from 24 in the last election.

Icelandic National elections This is the first time that more women than men have chosen the European Parliament.

The final result on Sunday also showed that the country’s ruling left and right alliance consolidated its majority.

Opinion polls had earlier predicted that the coalition would not reach a majority, but support for the center-right Progressive Party surged. The party won 5 more seats than in 2017, giving it a seat in the 63-seat parliament Althingi The total number reached 37, according to the national broadcaster RUV.

Voters elected 33 women to the parliament, up from 24 in the last election.

In the World Economic Forum (WEF) report released in March, Iceland has been rated as the most gender-equal country in the world for 12 consecutive years.

According to data compiled by the World Bank, as of last year, only three other countries—Rwanda, Cuba, and the United Arab Emirates—have more women in parliament than men.

In Europe, the proportion of women in the parliaments of Sweden and Finland is 47% and 46%, respectively.

Unlike some other countries, Iceland does not have a statutory quota for female representatives in Parliament, although some political parties do require a minimum number of female candidates.

The Icelandic Minister of Finance, the leader and top candidate of the Icelandic Independence Party, Bjarni Benediktsson (center and right), and party representatives reacted to the results displayed on the Icelandic capital Reykjavik’s monitors [File: Halldor Kolbeins/AFP]

The current Icelandic government is composed of Prime Minister Katrine Jacobsdottir’s left-wing Green Party, the conservative Independence Party and the centrist Agricultural Progress Party. They said before the election that if they have a majority, they will continue to cooperate in negotiations. .

President Goodney Johanneson stated that he will not delegate the task of forming a new government to any political party, but will wait for joint negotiations between the three parties.

“Now the ball is in the hands of the current government,” he told the Visir newspaper.

The conservative Independence Party once again became the largest party in the parliament, with nearly a quarter of the vote and 16 seats, the same as the previous election.

According to RUV, the leader of the party and former prime minister Bjarni Benediktsson said that he is optimistic that the three parties can form a coalition and that he will not ask to lead a new government.

The Progressive Party is led by Sigurdur Ingi Johannsson, who served as prime minister for less than a year in 2016 when the former prime minister and then party leader Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson stepped down after the Panamanian documents were leaked.

Iceland was the first country to elect a female president in 1980. Since 2018, it has enacted a groundbreaking gender equal pay law that requires employers to prove that they pay men and women the same wages.