The Mediterranean Institute of Gender Studies (MIGS) is calling on political parties to introduce binding quotas and concrete equality mechanisms following Sunday’s parliamentary elections, in which women won just 11 of the 56 seats in the new House of Representatives.
The figure represents 19.6% of the total. The breakdown by party is as follows: DISY four seats out of 17, AKEL three out of 15, ALMA two out of four, Direct Democracy one out of four, DIKO one out of eight, and ELAM none out of eight.
The result marks an improvement on the 2021-2026 parliament, in which women held eight seats — 14.3% of the total — though MIGS noted it remains below the 19.6% recorded in the 2016-2021 period. The 5.3 percentage point increase does not recover the ground lost since 2016, the institute said.
Of the 753 candidacies registered for this year’s elections, only 224 — 29.7% — were women, MIGS said, adding that the final result fell short even of that already limited level of participation.
The institute pointed to Cyprus’s ranking in the European Institute for Gender Equality’s 2025 Gender Equality Index, which placed Cyprus second to last in the EU in the area of power.
It also cited the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s Women in Parliament in 2025 report, published in March 2026, which put the European average for women MPs at 32.3%.
The new composition of parliament demonstrates clearly that a renewal of the political landscape does not automatically produce gender equality, MIGS said.
The political system was failing to promote equality in decision-making centres, it added, with women having limited access to positions of power within structures that remained deeply male-dominated.
Declarations of equality without practical measures were not only ineffective, but amounted to the instrumentalisation of equality, the institute said, calling for immediate institutional action to reverse the systemic exclusion of women from political life.
MIGS congratulated all newly elected MPs and said it would remain vigilant in ensuring a gender agenda in the work of the House.
