The commission’s 2018 report on equality between men and women, published by the EU’s executive arm to mark International Women’s Day on 8 March, notes that as of November of 2017 just 16.7% of the members of Portugal’s government were women, against an EU average of 27.7%.

Behind Portugal are only Hungary, whose government has no women, Cyprus (where women account for 8.3% of the total), the Czech Republic (11.8%) and Malta (13.3%). The country with the highest female representation in government is Sweden, with 52.2%, followed by France with 50% and Slovenia with 47.1%.

However, according to the commission report, Portugal does much better where female representation in parliament is concerned, with more than one third of deputies being women.

Portugal ranks eighth in the EU on this measure, behind Sweden (46.1%), Finland (42.0%), Spain (40.6%), Belgium (38.7%), Denmark (37.4%), Slovenia (35.6%) and the Netherlands (35.3%). The EU average is 29.3%.