After the election, women are poised to make up less than a third of representatives in the Chamber of Deputies. Still, this represents a move up from 2018 when only eleven women were directly elected to parliament.
While losing more than half their seats in the Chamber, the Greens now have just as many women as men in parliament. In the case of the Luxembourg Socialist Workers’ Party (LSAP), the Democratic Party (DP), and the Christian Social People’s Party (CSV), each have five women in the Chamber after the election.
For a first time in the history, the Alternative Democratic Reform Party (ADR) has a female representative after an election.
According to Claire Schadeck from the CID Women and Gender, it is disappointing to only see 18 directly elected women in the Chamber: “In our eyes it is not only the voters that are responsible, but also the parties. Which people do they send to election debates? Which people speak for them on radio, who is visible? Because with our voting system, the best known people get the most votes.”
In the eastern constituency, four out of seven mandates went to women, however.
Schadeck argued that women are needed to diversify the opinions among decision-makers in the Chamber: “Women live, thanks to their different socialisation, other realities and bring other perspectives, which is why it is crucially important that they are represented in the Chamber.”
Michèle Schilt from the Centre for Citizenship Education agrees that diversity is positive for the Chamber, not only in terms of gender, but also in terms of age and employment.
Witz Liz Braz, Claire Delcourt, and Alexandra Schoos, three young women have been elected to parliament in the recent election. With the future government still in the making, it is also clear that new MPs will ascend to the Chamber once ministerial duties have been allocated among coalition parties.
