Are you surprised: Saudi Arabian "parliament" has a higher percentage of women than US Congress?

Apr 01, 2026

I remember hearing that Iranian women get nearly 5 times the STEM degrees as the US and have 5 times the women receiving PhD. degrees per capita, so I was curious how many members of the Iranian Parliament are women?

Factors:

Iran established education quotas.
Male higher degree completion is reduced by conscription - if they fail the entrance exam, they are conscripted for 2 years and face a harder time retesting, whereas women can retest multiple times without getting rusty due to a 2 year military stint.
Men face more pressure to work to support themselves.
Men work a greater variety of jobs, including manual labor and trades which do not require a degree.

I decided to compare Iran’s national women representatives with a sampling of various countries.

Rwanda: 61.3%

Cuba: 53.2%

Mexico: 50.2%

China: 26.5%

Israel: 25.0%

US: 18%

Japan: 15.7%

India: 15.1%

Iran: 4.8%

Are these numbers accurate? What factors influence the degree to which women participate in national representation?
Are you surprised that Saudi Arabia has more women representatives than the US.?
Are you surprised by other countries? Would you like to comment on a particular country, or the broader trends?
Note: Take it with a grain of salt: some of these “parliaments”, such as Saudi Arabia, have limited power, as their work is easily vetoed. How would you assess the real power of different countries’ legislatures?

openpolitics