Only 19 women to sit in Parliament

Zagreb - Croatia's 9th parliament will include only 12.5% of women deputies or 19 in all, which is the lowest number of women in the Sabor in the past fifteen years.

Ten women from the People's Coalition will sit in the 151-seat parliament. The Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) will have five women MPs while the Human Shield party will be represented by one woman. Two women from the Bridge party will sit in the new parliament. Not one woman was elected on the Diaspora slate while one woman from minority slates will represent the Albanian ethnic minority.These are the second parliamentary elections that provided the option of a preferential vote for one candidate and as a result, two women won seats in parliament thanks to preferential votes.

The exact number of women lawmakers in the 9th parliament will be known once the government is formed should any of the women elected to parliament be appointed to the government. A comparison with the November election shows that 23 or 15% of lawmakers in the 8th parliament were women, while the 7th parliament had 38 women MPs. Despite the legislative imperative that at least 40% of candidates on party slates must be women, almost all parties running in the latest election failed to meet that quota.