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Note: This document is from the archive of the Africa Policy E-Journal, published
by the Africa Policy Information Center (APIC) from 1995 to 2001 and by Africa Action
from 2001 to 2003. APIC was merged into Africa Action in 2001. Please note that many outdated links in this archived
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Southern Africa: Women in Politics
Any links to other sites in this file from 1996 are not clickable,
given the difficulty in maintaining up-to-date links in old files.
However, we hope they may still provide leads for your research.
Southern Africa: Women in Politics
Date distributed (ymd): 960904
Southern African Research & Documentation Centre
August 15, 1996
Institutional Mechanisms for the Advancement of Women
Although women in southern Africa constitute half the
electorate, they hold on average, only 10 percent of the
seats in parliament and six percent in national cabinets.
South Africa holds the distinction of having the highest
numbers of female members of parliament (MPs) with 25
percent representation.
According to the 1995 Beijing Conference Report on the
status of women in southern Africa, Mozambique has the
second highest figure of women in political decision-making,
holding 24.4 percent of the seats in parliament. Women's
limited participation in economic and political
decision-making bodies can be attributed to inadequate
institutional mechanisms to advance the status of women.
Since changes in society normally come through the political
process, the need for women to be among those who make
policies and decisions at all levels of government is
critical if their plight has to be adequately addressed.
"It is important for women to know that they have to be
there (within the political process) where it matters.
Whether it is at the rural council, urban council or other
levels of policy making, they have to be there to ensure
their lot is addressed," says UN Development Fund for
Women's (UNIFEM) Regional Advisor for Eastern and Southern
Africa, Gita Welch from Mozambique.
Welch attributes women's low representation in the political
decision-making process to several factors. "Socio-cultural
perceptions and inhibitions, lack of finance, lack of
political commitment, consciousness and goodwill and the
general lack of infrastructure," she says, keep women
confined to roles outside of politics.
Establishment of institutional machineries to design,
promote, monitor, advocate and mobilize support for policies
to advance the status of women was marked as one of the
areas of concern to which governments committed themselves
at the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing,
China, in 1995, as well as the African Platform for Action
at the Dakar, conference in 1994.
The African Platform defines these machineries as
"institutions of formal entities recognised by governments
and entrusted with particular responsibility for the
advancement of women and the elimination of all forms of
discrimination against women for monitoring the
ramifications of gender relations in a given society, and
for acting as advocates on behalf of women."
Available data shows that all the SADC (Southern African
Development Community) countries have some
form of national machinery responsible for women's issues.
However, there is still much debate on the form these
machineries should take especially at government level where
in the past, women's ministries or departments further
marginalised women. Some women in the region are against the
idea of a woman's ministry as a machinery for women's
advancement. "It is a way of side-stepping women's issues.
It is like saying, `do not bother us' because you have a
place to go. But then nothing happens," said gender
activists at last year's post-Beijing conference in Zambia.
National machineries for the advancement of women should be
the central policy-coordinating unit inside government,
whose main task should be to support government-wide
mainstreaming of a gender-equality perspective in all policy
areas.
But studies on the status of institutional mechanisms in the
region show that they are frequently hampered by unclear
mandates, lack of adequate staff, training, data and
sufficient resources.
The Beijing Platform for Action however, places heavy
responsibility on governments and other stakeholders to
create or strengthen national machineries and integrate
gender perspectives in legislation, public policies,
programmes and projects for the advancement of women in
societies.
Mainstreaming gender should be the core of institutional
mechanisms especially at government level, to avoid
marginalisation of women's issues in one place, while
conditions for an effective function of a national machinery
as highlighted in the Beijing Platform for Action should
include:
* Location at the highest possible level in the government,
falling under the responsibility of a cabinet minister;
* Institutional mechanism of a process that facilitates, as
appropriate, decentralised planning, implementation and
monitoring with a view to involving non-governmental
organisations and community organisations from the grass
roots upwards;
* Sufficient resources in terms of budget and professional
capacity;
* Opportunity to influence development of all government
policies and;
* Report, on regular basis, to legislative bodies on the
progress of efforts, as appropriate, to mainstream gender
concerns, taking into account the implementation of the
Platform for Action;
Strategies for Action
* Governments should ensure that responsibility for the
advancement of women is vested in the highest possible level
of government, in many cases, this could be at the level of
a cabinet minister;
* Based on a strong political commitment, national
machineries should be created, where they do not exist, and
strengthened, as appropriate, machineries, for the
advancement of women at the highest possible level of
government. These should have clearly defined mandates and
authority with critical elements to include among other
things; adequate resources, the ability and competence to
influence policy, formulate and review legislation, do
policy analysis, undertake advocacy, communication,
coordination and monitoring of implementation;
* Provide staff training in designing and analysing data
from a gender perspective;
* Establish procedures to allow the machinery to gather
information on government-wide policy issues at an early
state and continuously use it in the policy development and
review process within government;
* Encourage and promote the active involvement of the broad
and diverse range of institutional actors in the public,
private and voluntary sectors to work for equality between
women and men.
* Carry regular reviews on how women benefit from public
sector expenditures to ensure equality of access to public
sector expenditures, both for enhancing productive capacity
and for meeting social needs and achieve gender-related
commitments made in other UN summits and conferences.
* Give all ministries the mandate to review policies and
programmes from a gender perspective and in the light of the
Platform for Action; locate the responsibility for the
implementation of that mandate at the highest possible
level;
* Promote and establish cooperative relationship with
relevant branches of government, centres for women's studies
and research, academic and educational institutions, the
private sector, the media, NGOs and all others actors in
civil society.
* Promote the increased participation of women as both
active agents and beneficiaries of the development process,
which would result in an improvement in the quality of life
for all;
* Establish direct links with national, regional and
international bodies dealing with the advancement of women;
* Educate women on how the political mechanisms work and on
how women can get into political decision-making positions.
Some women NGOs in Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe
have already embarked on political empowerment strategies.
* Programme Manager for UNIFEM's Women and Development
project in SADC, Nomcebo Manzini of Swaziland, however,
maintains that political empowerment strategies must also
take into account the fact that filling quotas or placing
women in key positions is not enough.
* Women's NGOs should hold seminars aimed at sensitising men
in decision-making bodies on gender issues. This is being
done in countries like Botswana, Tanzania, Zambia and
Zimbabwe.
* The proposed SADC gender desk is another strategy towards
the advancement of women, as their plight would be addressed
at a regional level. The desk could among things, provide
training and advisory assistance to government agencies to
integrate a gender perspective in their policies and
programmes from a regional level. Caution however, should be
made to ensure the gender desk does not marginalise women
further.
Southern African Research & Documentation Centre (SARDC)
P O Box 5690, Harare Zimbabwe
Tel: +263-4-38694/5/6
Fax: +263-4-738693
E-mail: [email protected]
SARDC is an independent institution involved in the
collection, analysis, and dissemination of information about
the southern African region. This article is taken from
SARDC's biweekly service of Southern Africa News Features,
available by mail and e-mail. SARDC also produces special
features from its affiliated projects, including the Women in
Development Southern Africa Awareness Project. For more
information contact SARDC.
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This material is being reposted for wider distribution by
the Africa Policy Information Center (APIC), the educational
affiliate of the Washington Office on Africa. APIC's primary
objective is to widen the policy debate in the United States
around African issues and the U.S. role in Africa, by
concentrating on providing accessible policy-relevant
information and analysis usable by a wide range of groups
and individuals.
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