(non-final) Today on WINGS, an Irish Senator and a former New Zealand Prime Minister discuss women politicians' leadership on issues affecting women and kids. Their conversation was hosted by the International Parliamentary Union. On WINGS, you are listening to excerpts from a new podcast series by The International Parliamentary Union. IPU is an organization currently comprising 180 of the 190 national parliaments currently functioning in the world. One of their activities is ranking countries by the percentage of women in their legislative bodies. As of April 24, 2024, Rwanda still held the top spot, followed by Cuba, Nicaragua and Mexico - Australia was in 32nd place - Canada, 65th. The US was tied with Iraq for 72nd place. These percentages have a lot to do with the countries' electoral systems - as Helen Clark, former Prime Minister of New Zealand, and Irish Senator Lorraine Clifford-Lee explain. New Zealand was ranked in 16th place for percentage of women in Parliament, and Ireland [103rd] one hundred and third. But even at just 37%, Irish women have influence in Parliament. Since this program was recorded, Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, was physically assaulted in a public square. WINGS thanks the Inter Parliamentary Union for use of content from their podcast - under their Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This episode of "IPU on-air" featured a dialogue between host Irish Senator Lorraine Clifford-Lee, Chair of the IPU Advisory Group on Health, and Rt.Hon. Helen Clark, former Prime Minister of New Zealand and Chair of the Board of the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health. WINGS appreciates all our supporters, including your local community radio stations, Suzette Cullen, and Genevieve Vaughan, author of the book The Gift in the Heart of Language: The Maternal Source of Meaning. You can reach us via email, wings@wings.org - The WINGS sound logo is from Libana's album A Circle Is Cast. I'm Frieda Werden. This is the Women's International News Gathering Service. ----------------