Statistics on Female Representation in Azerbaijan

The Trend News Agency has an article about the recent statistics that have come out about women in government in Azerbaijan.  The numbers aren’t spectacular: 14% of judges, 16% of Parliament Members, about 26% are members of the local governments, and there are zero women as heads of ministries.  If there are no women qualified for those positions, fine.  I’m skeptical that that’s the case.

Yet, these numbers are unsurprising.  I don’t think they are acceptable, but they aren’t surprising.  What really caught my attention here was the paragraph below, which I’m putting here in case Trend catches their mistake and corrects their article.  (And if it’s not a mistake, then we have a much bigger issue to talk about.)

According to the Interior Ministry, roughly 3.5 percent of employees hit women. They work mainly in the secretariat, passport offices, personnel, financial, medical, information and statistical areas, in the field of communication technologies, services “102” and “safe city”.

Ouch.  Let’s hope that’s a typo.  (That’s not to say that violence against women isn’t an issue here, but it would be rather odd coming in this report.)