In 2021, about 1 in 4 parliamentary seats on average were held by women across 185 countries.

On an individual country basis, representation varies significantly. Over 20 countries had significant numbers of women (more than 40% representation) in parliamentary seats in 2021, but more than 65 had less than 20% female parliamentary representation. (Of course, representation alone does not always translate to political influence.)

There has been some progress over the last decade. The average percentage of women holding parliamentary seats across the 153 countries with data every year between 2010 and 2021 grew by over 7% between 2010 and 2021.

The trend is upwards, but it is slow. At the current rate, it would take about 35 more years for the average representation of women in parliaments to approach 50%.

ICE Sustainable Finance also looked at two important measures of financial autonomy and access to digital financial services for women – the rates of credit ownership and debit card ownership (age 15+).

In 2021, Canada, Israel, and Iceland had the highest rates of female credit card ownership across the 116 countries with data available.

In 18 countries, more than half of women owned credit cards in 2021, but in other parts of the world, these rates are much lower. In 56 countries, less than 10% of women own credit cards—though in these places, male rates of credit card ownership also tended to be low.

In 2021, there were 29 countries in which rates of credit card ownership for women were higher than those for men.

Across the 100 countries with data available in 2011, 2014, 2017, and 2021, credit card ownership rates have been increasing for everyone, but men still tend to have higher rates than women on average.

Over the last decade or so, the gender disparities in credit card ownership have narrowed dramatically (or flipped) in some countries. The countries that saw the largest increases in women’s rates of credit card ownership relative to men’s rates between 2011 and 2021–in other words, the countries that saw the greatest change in the difference between men’s rates of ownership and women’s rates of ownership—were Saudi Arabia, Germany, Italy, the UAE, Finland, and the United States. In 2011, these countries all had higher rates of credit card ownership for men than women; by 2021, seven of them have higher rates of ownership for women than men.

Finally, though debit card ownership rates (age 15+) are much higher for both men and women, there is a gender disparity. As with credit card ownership, debit card ownership rates are increasing for both men and women across the world, though women’s rates remained about 5% lower than men’s rates on average in 2021.

Though these charts and numbers represent only a partial picture—constrained by data availability and focused on only three specific measures of women’s representation and financial services access—they are thought provoking, nonetheless.

On this International Women’s Day, ICE Sustainable Finance celebrates the progress that has been made and recognizes that there is still a lot to be done.