LIBERALS around the world delighted in Justin Trudeau’s response when he was asked, shortly after becoming Canada’s prime minister, why half the members of his cabinet were female. “Because it’s 2015,” he quipped.

In France last year, president Emmanuel Macron named a cabinet in which half of the 22 cabinet posts were taken over by women. Yet the progress of women in politics has been slow. According to the most recent figures from the International Parliamentary Union, just 24% of parliamentarians around the world are women, twice the share recorded 20 years ago.

Until Mariano Rajoy was ousted as the prime minister of Spain on June 1st, just two of the 28 countries in the EU had cabinets with equal representation by gender. The EU average was a paltry 28%. Spain’s new prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has done his best to rectify the imbalance. His Socialist party took power for the first time since 2011 on June 2nd, when Mr Rajoy’s conservative People’s Party, embroiled in a corruption scandal, lost a no-confidence vote. One week later, Mr Sánchez announced a cabinet with women filling 11 of the 18 jobs, a leap from five women out of 14 ministers in Mr Rajoy’s cabinet. Spain thus overtook Sweden to become the country with the highest share of female members of government in the EU. Women took over many of the most important portfolios, including defence, economy, finance and education. Mr Sánchez’s move is striking given that countries in southern and eastern Europe have lagged behind their northern counterparts.

Is more equal representation of women in government a silver lining of Europe’s political turmoil? Almost certainly not. Women might have moved forward in the governments of Spain and France, but they have made no progress in Italy. The new all-populist government of Giuseppe Conte had just five women among the 18 ministers. And the nationalist government in Hungary holds a dire record: only one ministerial position is filled by a woman.

Correction (June 13th, 2018): The chart was changed to reflect the correct proportion of women in Czech Republic's cabinet (26.7%), and Hungary's cabinet has one female member rather than zero as previously stated.