AFRICA: Women's Involvement in African Politics Vital to Protecting Their Rights

Female representation in government and legislative bodies in sub-Saharan Africa is growing but more women must take political leadership roles in their countries to ensure that laws and conventions protecting their rights are implemented, according to civil society groups.

In 2006, the continent saw its first elected female head of state in Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia. The overall percentage of women legislators in sub-Saharan Africa is 18.5 percent and has risen steadily over the last decade according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU).

Women make up 49 percent of Rwanda's parliament, the highest percentage of women in any parliament worldwide, while in countries like Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda they have reached the 30 percent mark, the threshold the IPU considers necessary for women to have real influence in any given parliament.

But many women's rights groups on the continent believe this is not enough. They want more women to move from essentially civil society activism to political leadership which confers the power to enforce laws upholding women's rights.

“We have to stop being wary of politics because we have been fighting for years and the fact is that we have not made much gain without access to power and in Africa that comes through politics and we must be realistic and accept that,” said Fanta Gueye, the secretary general of the association of female jurists in Senegal (AJES).

Gueye said African women must also go beyond simply achieving political representation to focus on the meaning of that representation for advancing gender equality and women's human rights.

For instance, the association of women parliamentarians in Senegal played a key role in campaigning for the adoption of a bill instituting parity for male and female candidates in elections in the West African nation, according to media reports.

The law, enacted last May, requires political parties to field an equal number of men and women in their lists of candidates for municipal and legislative elections. Parties which do not respect the quota would be barred from participating in elections.

“I am calling on women's organisations to be involved in politics so that we can make it to parliament and be able to influence laws that are voted and be part of government so we can put pressure for these laws to be implemented,” Gueye told TrustLaw in Dakar.

Although political positions such as minister and Member of Parliament are important, women's rights activists also encourage women to continue to seek intermediary civic management roles in their communities that are instrumental in seeing that laws are implemented.

“Women should seek positions in village management committees, credit committees and health committees where they can ensure that women's rights are promoted and implemented,” said Mariame Coulibaly, president of Women in Law and Development in Africa (WILDAF) a civil society organisation working on the promotion of laws for women.

“I believe that when it is women who occupy those roles things will improve and not necessarily via politics,” she added.

For many years, governments and civil society groups focused on capacity building activities to promote women's rights to land, inheritance, economic empowerment, freedom of expression and combating violence against women.

The growing interest among women in political representation and power should not put an end to this approach, especially as many women in Africa remain unaware of the existing laws that protect their rights, according to experts.

Several countries have included the protection of women's rights in their constitutions and signed and ratified international conventions such as the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discriminiation and the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights on the rights of women, but the beneficiaries often remain ignorant of their existence.

“We have to simplify these laws, sensitise the people about their importance and make it easy for them to understand the relevance of these laws and ensure that these laws are implemented,” Coulibaly said.

She encouraged civil society groups, particularly those involved in promotion of legal issues, to provide local women with explanations of existing legislation and new laws enacted by parliament through legal clinics, radio programmes in local languages and workshops.

“If you access power to represent grassroots people who are ignorant of the laws available to protect them, you are not making much progress,” Coulibaly said.