Are Women ready for political office?

In April this year the Namibian Women's Manifesto Network was invited to address the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Petitions on the 50/50 Bill. This followed a march to Parliament in March 2002, during which a petition was handed to the Speaker of the National Assembly requesting Parliament to pass the 50/50 Bill as soon as possible.

The Bill is a layperson's draft commissioned by the Namibian Women's Manifesto Network and developed by the Legal Assistance Centre. It contains changes to the electoral acts that will bring about gender balance at the three levels of government.

The members of the Petitions Committee agreed that equal representation of women and men at all levels of government was a central aspect of gender justice and gender democracy. However, some members argued that achieving gender balance should be a longer term goal, stating that in general women were not ready for Parliament yet as they lacked education and experience.

This view was contested by the delegation from the Namibian Women's Manifesto Network, consisting of Gisella Haoses from Women's Solidarity, Ndeshi Kukuri from Namibia National Association of Women in Business, Alwina Awases from Khomas Women in Development, Rachel Cloete and Hildegardt Itwa from Hardap Women's Voice/Women's Action for Development, Sarie Xoagus-Eises from Namibia Media Women's Association, Christina Aochamus from the Namibian Girl Child Organisation, Liz Frank from Sister Namibia and myself as spokesperson of the Namibian Women's Manifesto Network.

We questioned why education should be made into such a major criteria, indeed barrier for women's election into political office, seeing that men do not receive special education in this field. Indeed no one asks whether men are educated enough before they stand for office.

We also pointed out that the majority of teachers in Namibia are women, which proves that there are many educated women in Namibia. But we suggested that it cannot be assumed that an educated woman will automatically speak for her fellow women once she is in political office, and that it was therefore important for poor and rural women to be elected who are committed to representing their communities. We put forward that translation services should be provided in parliament, as the use of English only is another barrier preventing marginalised women from entering or becoming effective in this domain.

As to the question of women's lack of experience in political decision making, we argued that women are already decision makers in family and community contexts, and that the implementation of Affirmative Action measures in the Local Authority elections of 1992 and 1998 demonstrated that political parties were able to identify and enlist competent women as candidates for almost gender balanced party lists. Many of these women are now mayors, deputy mayors or chairpersons of Local Councils, and the last three Presidents of the Association of Local Authorities in Namibia have been women.

Indeed, speaking at a conference of Women's Action for Development last December, the Minister of Regional and Local Government and Housing stated publicly that Local Authorities headed by women were functioning better than those headed by men, and he called on more women to come forward and take leadership.

Let us remind ourselves here that the President himself included 15 women in his list of 30 top candidates that he presented to his party's electoral congress in 1999. According to media reports it was his fellow male party members who shot the list down. We thus firmly believe that the real barrier to women's political participation is not their so-called lack of education, but the unwillingness of men to share political power with women. This is why we need the 50/50 Bill to be passed now!