Today I came across the UK Shadow Cabinet announced by the new Conservative Party leader, David Cameron. It struck me that out of 24 members, there are only 4 women. South Africa has tried hard to achieve gender parity, and has one of the highest ratios of women in office (Rwanda I think has the highest), but I was surprised that the UK Conservative Party would be so bad. Assuming the other 2 main British parties had to have a better ratio, I looked them up. Labour was better, slightly, with a ratio of 6 from 22. Surely the Liberal Democrats would better this? Nope, they were the worst of the lot, with 2 from 22, including one women whose portfolio was the oddly titled Women and older people.
So how does that compare with the South African cabinet? 12 from 28.