Green party wants 50 pct. women in new cabinet

GroenLinks leader Jesse Klaver wants the next cabinet to consist of an equal number men and women, he said at a meeting in Leiden on Monday. He feels it is time for the glass ceiling to be broken, AD reports.

According to Klaver, making sure that half of the new cabinet is women will not only do justice to women's talent, but also send "a signal to society that we do not accept exclusion and deprivation. Therefore, half of the ministers on the next government should be women", he said, according to the newspaper.

So far all Dutch governments consisted of mostly men. Wim Kok was the first to have more than one or two women on his cabinet - between 1994 and 1998 he had four female ministers. His second cabinet also included four women and 11 men. The second Balkende government (2003 to 2006) consisted of five women and 11 men. The current Rutte II cabinet has five women among his 13 ministers.

Governing with an equal number of men and women is not an impossible task. The Norwegian government that took office in 2005 counted 10 male and 9 female ministers. And in 2015 Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau presented a cabinet with an equal number of men and women. When asked why this was important to him, he said: "Because it's 2015."