Seats Held by Women in National Parliaments and Governments
Community Challenge Makeover Monday 2021 Week 9:
My redesign (Tableau File Here):
Sparkline Tooltips Shown When Hovering Over a Country
Reading Time 55 seconds
Goals
Illustrate how the Female Participation in EU Governments has changed
Use a viz in the tooltip to provide more information
Utilize a map to convey information
Prep for future tableau certification by doing the viz in less than 20 mins
Key Findings
Tracking women's representation in national parliaments is one of the UN's core Sustainable Development Goal indicators (SDG 5: Gender Equality). The data, sourced from Eurostat and covering EU member states, shows both how far gender parity in government has come and how far it still has to go.
Some EU countries have maintained close to 50% female representation in their national parliaments for decades, driven by legislative quotas or strong political party commitments to gender balance. Others have seen representation stagnate or even decline. The dataset covers the full EU membership period, meaning you can trace changes before and after major political shifts in individual countries.
A notable data point: the dataset includes Great Britain pre-Brexit, referred to as EU 27+1. Post-Brexit data uses EU 27. This distinction matters when comparing participation rates across time periods.
The interactive map below shows female government participation by country for any selected year. Darker shades of blue indicate a higher percentage of women in government. Hovering over a country reveals a sparkline showing that country's trend over the full data range, with a 50% parity reference line shown in yellow.
Data source: Eurostat — SDG 05 50. Challenge: Makeover Monday 2021 Week 9.
Project Discussion
The colors chosen for this viz are based on the European Union's flag, Reflect Blue (#003399) and Yellow (#FFCC00). Something new to me is how to abbreviate the EU with and without Great Britain. This data included Great Britain, so EU 27+1 is used. For data after Brexit, use EU 27. Given that the data is about the countries in the EU, it was the perfect opportunity to use a map to show information.
The viz contains a map; when countries have a darker shade of blue more women are in government. The user can select a year in the year filter. This filter changes the coloring in the map to reflect the % of women in government for that year. When hovering over a country, a viz is shown in the tooltips. The viz is a reference showing 50 % in yellow and a blue sparkline showing the percentage of women in government over time.
I am using the Makeover Monday weekly challenges as a way to prep for the tableau certification. For this reason, the time spent creating a viz is limited to 20 minutes.
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Links & Additional Information
Challenge Information
Original Article: Seats held by women in national parliaments and governments (source: EIGE)
Data Source: EuroStat
Challenge Link: Makeover Monday 2021 wk 9
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