Estonia, EU – Baltic States, Forum, Legislation, Society

PACE on April 21st approved a resolution on gender equality which stressed the need to promote women's participation in politics, spokespeople for the Estonian parliament said. One of the proposals was to implement gender quotas so that women's political representation would be improved.

"Estonia's Social Democratic Party (SDE) has voluntarily implemented a quota inside the party and the Reform Party has started to follow suit. As a result the [101-member] Riigikogu has 27 women MPs or more than even before," said Mikko, a member of SDE.

"The more women are making decisions in the society, the more democratic the country is. The Nordic countries are an example of that because in Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Iceland the share of women in parliaments as well as governments is around 40%," Mikko said.

At the PACE meeting the other topics to be discussed this week include the intellectual property rights on the internet, the situation of people during the Ukraine war, the Brussels terrorist attack and Panama documents.

Estonian delegation consists of MPs Marianne Mikko, Jaak Madison, Andres Herkel and Raivo Aega.