Women in Politics
The drive to promote women in decision-making positions worldwide gained momentum during the 1980s and early 1990s through a series of international conferences. Further impetus came from the Fourth World Conference on women, held in Begging, China, in 1995, which called for at least 30 per cent representation by women in national governments. In September 2000 at the UN Millennium Summit in New York, world leaders pledged to "promote gender equality and the empowerment of women as effective ways to combat poverty, hunger and disease and to stimulate development that is truly sustainable". At that meeting, world leaders adopted the goal of gender equality and seven others, known collectively as the Millennium Development Goals. Since then, the number of women in leadership positions has been rising.
"Study after study has shown that there is no effective development strategy in which women do not play a central role", says UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. When women are fully involved, he notes, the benefits are immediate-families are healthier and better fed and their income, savings and investments go up. "And what is true of families is also true of communities and, in the long run, of whole countries".
Rwanda's success in bringing women to the political table mirrors that of a small, but growing number of countries in sub-Saharan Africa. In South Africa and Mozambique, for example, women hold 30 per cent of the seats in parliament matching the international target. Women's representation in national parliaments across sub-Saharan Africa equals the world average of about 15 percent. Despite being one of the poorest regions in the world, the level of women's representation in parliament in sub-Saharan Africa is higher than in many wealthier countries, observes UNIFEM in its Progress of the World's Women 2002 Report. In the US, France and Japan, for instance women hold slightly more than 10 per cent of parliamentary seats.
From Africa Recovery, vol. 18 No 1, April 2004 p. 4
Vocabulary:
Momentum: élan.
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