22.5% of Women in UK Government. Is that good enough?

The issue of female political representation is something of particular interest to me. At the start of the Spring term I created a create a 3000 word assignment, essential a dissertation plan. I struggled for a while at what I wanted to write about, all I knew is that I wanted it to relate to women in politics. I finally decided to write about levels of political representation. In the end, I am pleased with this topic. Firstly it has a  wide range of work already written on it, which makes it challenging but also gives you more to work with. Secondly the topic is still debated, and the issue is still has relevance today. The question is why in the modern day, do highly developed countries, such as the UK have such low levels of women in government. I don't have an answer yet, but I my approach to this topic is hopefully to research enough to understand why there is such variation across Europe and ways in which these efforts are being made to improve this, both at National and EU levels. 
Many people will agree with me that once you focus on something, there is often not much else you want to read or talk about. But in always being passionate about women's equality as well as my now focused research topic, I became very interested in a UK based campaign which as you will tell, is identical to what I want to change and learn more about.

"Counting Women In" - A campaign fighting for 50/50 gender representation.  Connected to the work of Fawcett society, a gender equality thinktank. 
Key things to take from this campaign:

• Sex and Power 2013 Report
• Sign the petition to make David Cameron keep his promise.
• Follow their Twitter
• #CountingWomenIn

Here are the simple facts. There are only 22.5% of women in parliament in the UK. Compare this with Sweden which has 44.7% of women in Parliament. Out of 190 countries, we are 57th! (Data taken from this website.)

I hope that once I have begun to fully research this topic, I will then be able to have my own opinion on the matter. There is no question that I believe more women need to be Parliament, while over half our population are women, it makes no sense that our government does not represent our population and therefore its interests. And without sounding like a radical feminist, I don't believe it is right that we have men dominating the political system. 
Whether we should implement positive discrimination, in the sense that we push for increased levels of women through the use of quotas is debatable. I hope that levels can increase because women are actively taking political roles and that the ability to gain positions in government are equally available.