Iceland on Sunday believed briefly that it had become the first country in Europe to have a female-majority parliament after its election a day earlier, but a recount showed it fell short, an election official said.
Of the 63 seats in the Althing parliament, 30 were won by women, or 47.6 percent, following the recount in one of Iceland’s constituencies, said Ingi Tryggvason, head of the electoral commission in the Northwest constituency.
Earlier on Sunday, projections based on final results had credited women with 33 seats, or 52 percent.
“We decided to hold a recount because the result was so close,” Tryggvason said, adding that no-one had requested it.
Further recounts in other parts of Iceland were not ruled out.
No European country has had more than 50 percent female lawmakers, with Sweden until now coming closest at 47 percent, data compiled by the World Bank showed.
Iceland has long been a pioneer in gender equality and women’s rights, and has topped the World Economic Forum’s ranking of most egalitarian countries for the past 12 years.
The country, which was the first to elect a woman as president in 1980, had been quick to celebrate the presumed milestone.
“I am 85, I’ve waited all my life for women to be in a majority... I am really happy,” Erdna, a Reykjavik resident, said earlier.
“This is yet another example of how far we have advanced on the road to full gender equality,” Icelandic President Gudni Johannesson had said.
Unlike some other countries, Iceland does not have legal quotas on female representation in parliament, although some parties do require a minimum number of candidates to be women.
Five countries have parliaments where women hold at least half the seats, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union: Rwanda with 61 percent, Cuba with 53 percent, Nicaragua with 51 percent, and Mexico and the United Arab Emirates with 50 percent.
The recount did not affect the overall election result.
Icelandic Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir’s left-right coalition won a majority, but the three parties are nonetheless expected to begin negotiations in the coming days to decide whether they would continue to govern together.
The coalition has brought Iceland four years of stability after a decade of political crises, but Jakobsdottir’s Left-Green Movement emerged weakened after losing ground to its right-wing partners, which both posted strong showings.
The Left-Green Movement, the conservative Independence Party and the center-right Progressive Party together won 37 of 63 seats in parliament, up from 33.
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