One man more

Sweet treat: proportion of women in government drops slightly

Andreas Babler, Christian Stocker and Beate Meinl-Reisinger will be leading the party.

(Bild: ASSOCIATED PRESS)

With the new black-red-pink coalition, the proportion of women in the government at the time of the inauguration has fallen slightly compared to the last turquoise-green cabinet. Even under Sebastian Kurz, there were more women in government as ministers.

While there were eight men and nine women (including state secretariats) at the start of Chancellor Karl Nehammer's (ÖVP) government, there are now eleven men and ten women. If only the ministerial posts are taken into account, there were eight men and seven women at the start of Nehammer's government and now there are eight men and six women.

In the two previous governments of Nehammer and Sebastian Kurz (both ÖVP), there were slightly more women than men in the government team at the inauguration. In the cabinet of Brigitte Bierlein, which immediately followed, there was gender parity.

The government is more female than the National Council
Expressed as a percentage, the proportion of women among the heads of department is now 47%. If the state secretariats are included, the figure is 48 percent. By way of comparison, 37% of members of the National Council are currently female.

Before the Bierlein government, men always had a clear majority: this was most blatant in the Grand Coalition of Federal Chancellor Josef Klaus (ÖVP) (until 1966). At that time, there was not a single woman at the cabinet table, and in the subsequent Klaus all-woman government, only one woman was represented, Grete Rehor (ÖVP).

Even after that, there were no more than three female members of government until Franz Vranitzky (SPÖ) took office - it was not until 1994 that five women (Sonja Moser, Maria Rauch-Kallat, Johanna Dohnal, Christa Krammer and Brigitte Ederer) were represented for the first time. However, they were still clearly in the minority in the 21-member government team at the time.

A 40 percent quota was achieved for the first time under Alfred Gusenbauer (SPÖ) in 2007. After that, however, the proportion of women in the government team fell again - until parity was reached for the first time under Bierlein (2019).