VIEW FROM THE CWP
THE FIRE FOR INCREASED WOMEN PARTICIPATION IN POLITICS SHOULD ONLY BURN FARTHER
Zimbabwean writer Ms Tsitsi Dangamermbga wrote: “This business of womanhood is a heavy burden...How could it not be? Aren’t we the ones who bear children? When it is like that you can’t just decide today I want to do this, tomorrow I want to do that, the next day I want to be educated! When there are sacrifices to be made, you are the one who has to make them.” Excerpt from Nervous Conditions These days it is worse, she noted, “with the poverty of blackness on one side and the weight of womanhood on the other. Aiwa!”
I base my first view for The Parliamentarian on Ms Dangamermbga’s approach to the question of women and the need for a better place for women across the world. You can call it a project. You can call it a plan. You can also call it a resolution.
What we all agree with is that it is one of the most important and most foresighted moves the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians (CWP) has ignited – the push to increase the number of women in political participation in all member states. Whenever we meet, women leaders keep reporting progress. Others report about obstacles they face and ask for help from fellow women across the membership. The CWP has always responded to those asking
Rt Hon. Rebecca Kadaga, MP Chairperson of the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians and Speaker of the Parliament of Uganda
ensure that policies work in favor of women and that means that development across our respective countries will be in the right direction. On top of planning how to exemplify the female leadership in the countries that are already making positive developments, we need to also work together and tirelessly plan with speed and urgency to help each other and the rest of the world appreciate the role of women in political leadership.
An individual alone cannot do the work and efforts required of the CWP. We need concerted effort to be able to cause change in all the Chapters in the nine regions, and we can only cause this change by adhering to our Strategic Plan.
We must work collectively to reform the electoral systems that do not favor women during elections. We must develop and implement funding frameworks for women politicians in our chapters, and we must work to secure adequate representation of women in our Parliaments. We must also increase the opportunities for women to access capital, assets, markets, education, health care and leadership at all levels.
One of the mechanisms that have worked is the use of quota systems where, through affirmative action, women are assured of a certain number of seats.
for help with zeal and to those who report success with more encouragement. We have held conferences in different countries and we keep hearing positive developments.
In Kenya, the situation changed after the 2011 meeting, where the number of female representation went from an unimpressive 20 women to now more than 30 including a female deputy speaker.
The CWP is a forum that offers us an opportunity to exchange ideas on policies and strategies that have worked and resulted in increased women participation in political leadership in some of our countries. Through this same forum, we must work to ensure that we help those countries that are still below the 30 per cent UN goal achieve the target mark and further help those who have achieved it reach the 50/50 parity benchmark.
The call I have always made and will continue making is that we should only increase the push to have women in more positions of responsibility. This is the only way we will be able to cause the institutional and ideological caprice and
240 | The Parliamentarian | 2013: Issue Four
It is my conviction that we should now work towards ensuring that the quota system, which remains the single most effective legal framework for increasing women participation in decision-making is promoted among the poorly performing states of the CPA.
Parliaments have the power to pass electoral laws and enact affirmative action measures that can overturn longstanding gender inequalities. Elections, too, therefore offer an important opportunity for women to move into the spaces that have opened up for them.
If we keep putting faith in women, if we respect peace and love, if we embrace democracy; friends, we will live true to Kwame Nkrumah’s slogan of “forward ever, backward never”.
During the tenth Commonwealth Women’s Affairs Ministers Meeting (10WAMM), I presented a paper entitled “Women’s political leadership in East Africa” making specific reference to Uganda.
I premised my presentation chronologically on tracking the progress made by
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