Iceland elects its first female-majority parliament

REYKJAVIK – Iceland has elected a female-majority parliament, a landmark for sex equality successful the North Atlantic land nation, successful a ballot that saw centrist parties marque the biggest gains.

After each votes were counted Sunday, pistillate candidates held 33 seats successful Iceland’s 63-seat parliament, the Althing. The 3 parties successful the outgoing conjugation authorities led by Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir won a full of 37 seats successful Saturday's vote, 2 much than successful the past election, and appeared apt to proceed successful power.

The milestone for women comes contempt a mediocre result for parties connected the left, wherever pistillate candidates are much often frontrunners.

Politics prof Silja Bara Omarsdottir said the sex quotas implemented by left-leaning parties for the past decennary had managed to make a caller norm crossed Iceland's governmental spectrum.

“It is nary longer acceptable to disregard sex equality erstwhile selecting candidates,” she said.

Ad

Opinion polls had suggested a triumph for left-leaning parties successful the unpredictable election, which saw 10 parties competing for seats. But the center-right Independence Party took the largest stock of votes, winning 16 seats, 7 of them held by women. The centrist Progressive Party celebrated the biggest gain, winning 13 seats, 5 much than past time.

Before the election, the 2 parties formed Iceland’s three-party conjugation government, unneurotic with Jakobsdottir's Left Green Party. Her enactment mislaid respective seats, but kept eight, outscoring canvass predictions.

The 3 ruling parties haven’t announced whether they volition enactment unneurotic for different term, but fixed the beardown enactment from voters it appears likely. It volition instrumentality days, if not weeks, for a caller authorities to beryllium formed and announced.

Climate alteration had ranked precocious connected the predetermination docket successful Iceland, a glacier-studded volcanic land federation of astir 350,000 radical successful the North Atlantic. An exceptionally lukewarm summertime by Icelandic standards — with 59 days of temperatures supra 20 C (68 F) — and shrinking glaciers person helped thrust planetary warming up the governmental agenda.

Ad

But that didn’t look to person translated into accrued enactment for immoderate of the 4 left-leaning parties that campaigned to chopped c emissions by much than Iceland is committed to nether the Paris Climate Agreement.

Among incoming members of parliament are the oldest and youngest lawmakers ever to instrumentality a spot successful Iceland: 72-year-old burger associated proprietor Tomas Tomasson and 21-year-old instrumentality pupil Lenya Run Karim, a girl of Kurdish immigrants who is from the anti-establishment Pirate Party.

“I privation to amended Iceland’s attraction of refugees and asylum-seekers,” she told The Associated Press, vowing to talk up for young radical astatine parliament. “Our ideas request to beryllium heard more.”

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This worldly whitethorn not beryllium published, broadcast, rewritten oregon redistributed without permission.