A women-only parliament for 2017?
Ragnheiður Ríkharðsdóttir MP. Photo: Golli
Ragnheiður Ríkharðsdóttir MP has presented the Icelandic Parliament (‘Alþingi’) with the “radical idea” of voting in a woman-only parliament in 2017.
Ríkharðsdóttir has been an MP for the centre-right Independence Party (‘Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn’) for eight years and told fellow MPs today that little has changed in Alþingi’s working methods in that time.
Two new ideas were aired in Ríkharðsdóttir’s speech. Firstly, that one parliament should be used to review old laws rather than enacting new ones. In her view, there needs to be an analysis or whether and how other legislation would work and whether or not the existing body of law could be ‘tidied up’.
Secondly, that voters should vote for a special two-year ‘all-women parliament’, 2017-19. This would give everybody the opportunity to see whether or not women really do do things differently to men.
Ríkharðsdóttir’s speech was greeted with cheers of “hear, hear!” from some women MPs.
