What domestic/national factors best explain the rise of women in parliament in Sub-Saharan Africa? European countries have historically had the highest representation of women in national legislatures – Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark (with 45.3, 38.2, 37.5, and 36.9 percent women, respectively, in early 2005). These countries all have proportional representation (PR) electoral systems. Conversely, the leading economic countries of Japan and the US have had less success placing women in national political office with slightly over 10% of their national legislators being women. In Africa, women benefiting from the existing proportional representation systems are gaining ground. In general, there are a plethora of factors that have led to the relative rise of women in national legislatures or parliaments in Africa. Some of these factors include:

• The use of gender-based electoral quotas. Primarily there are 3 forms of quotas: constitutional, legal/electoral, political party quota.
• Constant efforts of women lobbying for change.
• The rise and fall of women’s collective organizing—i.e. existence of a “women’s movement” or “movement of women.”
• Strong challenges to male dominated political party structures.
• Women’s participation in constitutional amendment processes.
• The creation of Ministries of Women’s Affairs.
• Global conferences of the UN and International Women NGOs advocating for gender equality and equity.
• Changing cultural attitudes.
• Alliance building strategies across ethnic, age, class, and gender lines.
• Political rewards from women’s participation in national liberation struggles or survival from post conflict situations.

In October 2003, the percentage of women in Rwanda’s national legislature climbed to 48.8 percent, leading other African nations on the continent and topping Sweden’s 45 percent of women in such positions. Africa, as a whole, has a 15 percent average number of women legislators, yet the largest populated country in Africa, Nigeria, has only a dismal 8 percent (a rise from 6% prior to the 2007 elections!) of women in the national legislature. States who are actually faring well and worthy of academic and lay focus to understand the dynamics of women’s electoral success include South Africa, Tanzania, Namibia, Uganda, and Mozambique with 32.8%, 30.4%, 26.9%, 23.9%, and 34.8% of women legislators respectively. A brief discussion follows on a few of the significant factors identified above that have facilitated increased women’s representation in legislatures while simultaneously posing problems of sustainable political advancements. Electoral Quotas Electoral quotas are designed to serve as temporary measures to bring more women into politics and may take various forms. Most quota systems aim at ensuring that women constitute at least a critical minority of 30 or 40 percent of legislative/parliamentary bodies (in line with Millennium Development Goals). Overall quotas, where adopted and implemented, have proven to be especially effective as a means of increasing the number of women in legislatures. The dominant types of quotas are:

• Constitutional Quotas – e.g. Burkina Faso, Uganda – Seats reserved for women as constitutional right;
• Election Law Quotas – e.g. Sudan, where the national legislature includes a quota provision;
• Political Party Quotas – e.g. South Africa and Mozambique, where internal rules by political parties slate a percentage of women candidates for office.

Women’s Lobbying and Advocacy Efforts In addition to the use of quotas, and now calls for 50-50 parity amongst various camps agitating for women’s political participation, women both individually and collectively are engaged in serious lobbying efforts, at the local, national and international levels to increase their numbers in legislatures; the result of which has been some penetration of power blocks in governments and political parties. Engaging in efforts to draft constitutions and develop voting guidelines guaranteeing seats for women have also had positive results. While some may differ with this belief, the creation of Ministry of Women’s Affairs with the mandate of promoting policies in women’s interest has created more political space for women in legislatures, appointed cabinet positions, and within other levels of government. Through strategic alliances with women in civil society, women’s organizations and gender advocacy groups, women in African legislatures have begun to build alliances and work through Caucuses and Networks to agitate for increased representation. They have also supported the UN and women’s international NGOs which through the Women’s Conferences in the 1980s and 1990s promoted the idea of equal representation for women. African women have organized and held several post-Beijing regional conferences in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and elsewhere in Africa to plan for increased women’s socio-economic and political empowerment. Although focused on Sierra Leone, a good explication of how African women have engaged in collective action for their advancement in various spheres of life, including the political sphere, can be found in Filomina Steady’s work, Women and Collective Action In Africa: Development, Democratization, and Empowerment (2005). In sum, relentless networking, lobbying for the advancement of women’s interests, and advocacy on women’s issues as required for fairness, equity and social justice must stay at the forefront of strategies to increase the numbers of women in office (Okome, 2007). Challenging Political Party Exclusionary Practices The above discussion of women’s activism points to the significance of women’s internal party activism to challenge exclusionary practices of the dominant male leaders and to create support networks to increase women’s political representation in national legislatures and other arenas. Such activism is crucial to the adoption and implementation of electoral and quota rules through sustained pressure from women’s group within and external to political parties (i.e., amongst women’s movement adherents more generally). As noted from the above statistics on women legislators in office, varying measures of success have been achieved in convincing party leaders to give women political voice and space. The dominance of elite males in political party leadership structures has meant their defining the rules and terms of engagement, which have had discriminatory gender impact on women’s selection as viable candidates for office. Political parties are the gatekeepers to women’s participation in politics because it is largely as candidates from particular parties that women stand for political office since, as is the case in Nigeria, one cannot run as an independent candidate—and this assumes that they can withstand the real process of election campaigning which takes place long before the party convention and primaries. Canvassing party leaders and other supporters for the money to engage in party politics and run for office can be a great barrier to women’s equity goals in holding national office and thus remains an area of grave concern, despite the gains made to date. Thus, even as African women who typically vote in larger numbers than men, articulate to party leaders how they can ensure general party electoral success, the response has been mixed and generally non-responsive to demands for equitable party treatment. While many parties have responded by eliminating fees for filing petitions for office, there are still high levels of resistance to women’s leadership in party machineries and candidacy, whether from elite backgrounds or not, as documented in a forthcoming study by NDI on women’s political participation in Nigeria during the 2007 elections where women were routinely taken off ballots or intimidated to step aside by party leaders for a male counterpart’s benefit. There remains much work to do to change men’s political party behavior in Africa. Addressing this issue necessarily highlight the linkages between economic empowerment and political empowerment. Political financing and gender equity should therefore be closely linked to electoral regimes and party systems. National Liberation Struggles and Political Conflict in Africa: What Gains for Women? A more contentious argument for explaining African women’s rise in political power and elected offices is that they have risen to high levels as officeholders in countries such as Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, and South Africa due to their participation in anticolonial national liberation struggles, or because of the devastation of war where men’s numbers in society were greatly reduced thus opening the door for women as benefactors of political offices when wars ended and their party assumed leadership of the state. For example, the women in Ugandan who fought in the National Resistance Army form the base of the Museveni Administration. In South Africa and Tanzania, women participated in multiple roles during liberation struggles and post liberation democratic formation processes, most critically as participants in writing constitutions and creating legislative structures. As a result, we see a relationship between such contexts and higher levels of women legislators than in other countries in Africa, and indeed other parts of the world. Without going into the merits of counterclaims that women have not really made substantive gains in these cases, it is instructive to note that regardless of the numbers of women in African legislatures and/or parliaments, African women in their struggle for gender and socio-economic equality and equity still greatly stress their intention to work in complementary partnerships with men to achieve political power in a manner reflective of African indigenous systems that stress the principle of complementarity and philosophy of ubuntu, between males and females in society. While not exhaustive, some of the challenges remaining for increasing women’s numbers (and hopefully substantive contributions to gender issues and national development) in legislatures include: 1) shifting the negative paradigms (whether originating within African culture or externally) that encourages disrespect and marginalization of women, 2) creating more political will and support for women amongst powerful political blocs and groups, particularly governments, 3) addressing the economic barriers to women’s political participation, 4) creating a cadre of future women leaders, both within the elective realm and general public sphere, who can continue to agitate to change the rules of political engagement to benefit women, and 5) embarking on constitutional reforms or enforcement of constitutional provisions that are designed to prevent discrimination of all forms. Women and men of courage and principle must continue to speak up for the rights of African women in public life across the continent and beyond. More importantly, women who gain access to national legislatures as officeholders where national resource income streams and distributions are shaped, must be responsive to the needs of the masses and work to address issues of hunger, poverty, homelessness, disease and gender discrimination, among other social ills as there is no forgone conclusion that such women will automatically take up these human rights issues in Africa or elsewhere. Afia S. Zakiya, Ph.D. Senior Program Manager National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) Abuja, Nigeria 2008 azakiya@ndi.org