Currently, women represent 19.4 percent of all parliamentarians in the regions of Europe, the Americas, Sub-Sahara Africa, Asia, the Pacific, the Arab States, and Nordic countries.
[1] The level of female participation in parliament varies between regions, ranging from percentages as high as 42 in Nordic countries to as low as 11.4 in Arabic states.
[2] Gylany is balanced and equalitarian, and should not be confused with gynocracy or matriarchy, which define the ancient systems where women ruled without hierarchy and lineage was matricentral.
Kleinberg and Boris point to a dominant paradigm which promotes wage-earning fathers with financially dependent mothers, the exclusion of same-sex couples, and the marginalization of single-parent families.
Evidence indicating historical gynocracies survives mostly in mythology and in some archaeological records, although it is disputed by some authors, like Cynthia Eller in her book The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory.