Yes, that’s where the Inter-Parliamentary Union places the United States in its most recent report on female participation in national parliaments. It’s number 79, to be exact. That ranking puts the U.S. behind Afghanistan (#35) and Iraq (#41), two countries that don’t exactly have the best track records when it comes to women’s rights.
According to the report, women make up only 17% of the Senate and 16.9% of the House. In Afghanistan, women make up just about 28% of both the Upper and Lower Chambers of the Parliament.
This year, the U.S. has a good shot at improving those numbers. According to the 2012 Project at Rutgers, 298 women are running for the House of Representatives, a record number. The previous record was set two years ago, when 262 women ran. That year, however, the number of women serving in Congress dropped for the first time in thirty years.
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