Initiate action to encourage more women in Parliament

Saturday, December 20, 2008 (The Mirror Pg 42)

By Rebecca Kwei
A human rights and gender activist, Nana Oye Lithur, has called on political parties to adopt affirmative action and select women to stand for parliamentary election in their strongholds.
This, she says, will ensure that more women get to parliament and talk about issues affecting women from an informed position and also address them more effectively.
Twenty out of the 103 women who contested the December 7 parliamentary election won, according to the results thus far declared by the Electoral Commission (EC).
The 20 female MPs comprise seven new MPs and 13 who retained their seats. The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has the highest number of 14 followed by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) with five and the Convention People’s Party (CPP), one.
In 2004, 25 women out of a total of 104 female candidates won the parliamentary election.
Nana Lithur says political parties need to take a cue from African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa which took a decision that one third of the 200 names that would be on their party list for parliament will be women.
She noted that since 1951 when elections were conducted in the country, women had not gotten beyond 10 per cent representation in parliament, hence the need for a conscious effort by the political parties to adopt a temporary measure such as affirmative action in order to increase the numbers.
Citing an example, Nana Lithur who is also the Co-ordinator of the Africa Office, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, explained that it is “just like what the universities have been doing by dropping the grades so that more girls can enter the tertiary institution.”
On why the number of female parliamentarians had decreased, she said “gender was not a factor for a voter in deciding whether to vote for Party A or B or candidate A or B.”
Rather, she noted that political affiliation, economic situation and the candidate’s ability to solve the electorate’s economic problems and sometimes tribal affiliation were some considerations.
“This means that if a woman does not get to be a candidate in a constituency that is a stronghold of a political party, or if she does not prove that she will be a good leader to address the economic and other concerns of the voters, the fact that she is a woman will not be a crucial factor.”
Another reason she observed was that because of the political system which focuses on getting a winnable candidate, it is difficult for women to be selected and also win seats.
She said women parliamentarians with the potential of winning this time around did not contest because of party wrangling.
On whether the media did not project enough women contesting parliamentary seats, Nana Lithur said the media could have done better knowing that there was a false assumption that there was an even playing field for women and men to stand and be voted for.
“The field is not even. There is money to be sought for campaign, lots of travelling; convincing her family, among others, and so the media should have projected women more than they did and run a media campaign to encourage the electorate to vote for women”, she added.
She appealed to civil society groups to be more assertive and go back to the drawing boards to outline the reasons accounting for the drop in the number of female MPs and work out a more effective strategy to get more women voted for.
Nana Lithur suggested that the lobbying should start with the political parties and affirmative action should be explained further.