Despite significant gains in women’s empowerment and participation in governance in recent years, men continue to dominate membership in national parliaments all over the world, Senator Pilar Juliana “Pia’’ S. Cayetano said Saturday.

This was the finding of the latest study on women membership in national parliaments by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), Cayetano, president of the IPU committee of women parliamentarians, said.

This means that barely just one out of every five lawmakers (18.8 percent) in the world today is a woman, she said.

“Even in these modern times where women have become more politically aware and socially empowered, the hard and sad fact is that men continue to write the laws of our world,” she stressed.

The Filipino senator led the 54th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, an annual conference of parliamentarians jointly organized by the IPU and United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women.

More than 140 representatives from 150 countries attended the main conference and side meetings at the UN Headquarters in New York last March 2-4.

Cayetano noted that as of last January 31, the IPU found out that men made up 36,330 (81.2 percent) while women occupied only 8,767 (18.8 percent) of the 44,767 seats of parliaments (combined upper and lower houses) all over the world.

This figure represents a marginal improvement from 18.3 percent in 2009, still a far cry from the target set by the UN Economic and Social Council of having a minimum of 30 percent women lawmakers in all parliaments. In 1995, women occupied only 11.3 percent of the world’s combined parliamentary seats. (Mario Casayuran)