Speaker of the Ekiti State House of Assembly, Rt. Honourable (Pastor) Kola Oluwawole, has identified ways women participation in politics can be improved, maintaining that this will help to deepen democracy in the country.
Oluwawole spoke in support of increased women participation in the polity in a keynote address he delivered at the opening of a two-day workshop, entitled Political Capacity Enhancement for Women, organized by Joe Okei-Odumakin-led Women Arise for Change Initiative, in Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti State Capital, on Wednesday.
According to a statement issued by his Special Assistant (Media), Stephen Gbadamosi, the lawmaker raised pertinent questions as to the role of women in politics and governance.
“According to the agreed conclusion adopted by the 50th session of the Commission on the Status of Women, ‘without the active participation of women and the incorporation of women’s perspectives at all levels of decision making, the goals of equality, development and peace cannot be achieved, and that women’s equal participation is a necessary condition for women and girls interests to be taken into account and is needed in order to strengthen democracy and promote its proper functioning.’
“What then is our strategic goal for increasing women’s political participation? I think we should first and foremost resist the temptation of being boxed into the corner of the question that sets up a false dichotomy between quantity and quality (i.e. between the number of women in elected and appointed positions and the quality of women representation).
“The dichotomy question is false because we need to prioritize both quality and quantity at the same time. This strategy is vital because numbers should be the first advocacy goal in the sense that women are more likely to have impact on policies, if they have a strong collective voice and sizeable representation, and because seeing women in leadership positions can change public attitudes/perception about what leadership should ‘look like’.
“Only when they are present in both large and qualitative numbers will women have the ability to affect lasting change in our democratic experiment.
“So, we need to remain strategically focused on both the quality of representation (e.g. the Minister of Finance and Petroleum resources as well as the Chief Justice of Nigeria, among others) and the quantity (e.g. in 1999, out of 360 House of Representatives seats, only 12 seats were won by women at 3.3%; in 2003, the number of women in the same House rose to 23 or 6.4%; in 2007, it further climbed to 26 or 7.2%, while in 2011, the number dropped to 19.
“For deputy governorship, out of 36 states in 1999, only one woman was appointed – 2.8%; in 2003, the number rose to 2 or 5.5%; it further rose to 6 or 16.7% in 2007, but sharply dropped to 3 in 2011.
“Out of the 109 senatorial seats, women won only 3 at 2.75% in 1999; won 4 at 3.7% in 2003; in 2007, it further rose to 9 or 7.3%, while in 2011 it slightly dropped to 7 seats. For the 990 seats in the 36 states Houses of Assembly in 1999, women won only 12 or 1.2%, in 2003, the number rose to 38 or 3.8% in 2007; it further rose to 54 or 5.5% and to 69 or 6.3% in 2011).
“This is necessary so that we don’t lose grounds. The earlier graphical illustration indicates that during the 2011 elections, women lost some of the earlier recorded positions between 1999 and 2007,” he said.
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