Africa has much to teach us about democracy
Catherine Muigai Mwangi: ‘Political equality must be backed up by economic and social parity.’
A RATHER pompous British journalist once asked India’s Mahatma Gandhi: “What do you think of Western civilisation?”
The quick-witted force of nature responded: “I think it would be a very good idea.”
The encounter may be apocryphal yet it resonates with the condescen-ding tone often used by Western nations when discussing democracy in Africa.
With the legacy of colonialism, it is little wonder that many African countries have struggled to find political stability. But the growing participation of women in politics — much of it precipitated by gender quotas — has not only transformed many of the continent’s regions but could provide a template for the West, Ireland included.
Worldwide efforts to promote women in decision-making roles gained prominence in the 1980s and was propelled after the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995 where delegates called for a global effort to secure a representation by women of 30% in national parliaments.
Since then, many countries have increased female political representation and some of the biggest increases have been seen in Africa. Some sub-Saharan countries have significantly higher levels of women’s representation in parliament and national assemblies than rich, so-called democratic countries.
About 16% of the national seats are held by women in the US and only 10% in Japan whereas in South Africa and Mozambique, women hold over one third of the seats in parliament.
However, there are exceptions. Although considered the economic giant of East Africa, in terms of women’s political representation, Kenya’s participation, at 9.8%, is dwarfed by neighbouring countries.
Last August’s Regional Dialogue on Women’s Political Leadership held in the capital, Nairobi, sought to draw lessons — and inspiration — from other African states where participation is much higher.
Rwanda is the world leader, with women parliamentarians making up 56% of the total. There is no doubt that this seismic shift in power has come about as a result of gender quotas. Under their new constitution, 24 out of the 80 seats are reserved for women in Rwanda’s lower house of parliament. The constitution also reserves six out of the 20 seats in the upper house for women.
The decision to do this was due to the persistent lobbying of Rwandan women who helped draft the new constitution and also secured a ministry for women’s affairs.
Elsewhere, South Africa, at 42% is close to gender equality while both Tanzania and Uganda, at 36% and 35% respectively, boast the kind of representation usually associated with Nordic countries.
To put that in local context, Ireland has a miserable record, lying in 89th position in a world classification table of women’s political representation in parliament. With the Dáil having a female representation rate of just over 15%, Ireland falls behind both the world average of 19.5% and the EU average of 24%.
Women’s representation in the Seanad is substantially better where 18 of the 60 seats, or 30%, are held by women. However, if the Upper House is scrapped — something currently under Government consideration — the Irish situation will worsen.
Even if the Seanad is retained, the National Women’s Council of Ireland has estimated that without a quota provision, it will take 370 years before gender parity in political representation is achieved in Ireland.
Female empowerment, though, can often reside elsewhere, as the Kenyan ambassador to Ireland, Catherine Muigai Mwangi, argues. This week Ms Mwangi, the first Kenyan envoy to Ireland, visited Cork to address students at UCC. Her talk focused on the kind of empowerment that enables women to access and control the means of economic production in a manner that gives them social and political powers to influence their own lives as well as the lives of those around them.
She questions whether the clamour for gender equality may have cost African women real empowerment and the experience of meaningful change. She recognises that broad concepts like human rights and gender equality are absorbed in different ways in various parts of the world.
“Although these issues are global, they translate quite differently in different societies,” says Ms Mwangi.
“We recognise things like human rights and gender equality globally but there are differences in how these concepts are translated and supported in various cultures.”
Although Kenya has made huge strides in terms of political representation of women, “we are not there, yet”, acknowledges the ambassador, though she is optimistic for the future.
Those strides include a ministry of gender and a new constitution adopted by the country in 2010. Kenya’s general election next March is likely to reveal whether such huge political shifts have heralded real change.
Already forcing that change is the decentralisation of political power with a huge strengthening of local government.
That system of building from the ground up is something she sees as central to real democracy: “People want to feel empowered and to feel that their opinions and their needs matter, so devolving power to the regions under the new constitution was essential as so much of Kenya’s population live in rural communities.”
With visionary women galvanising that kind of change, anything is possible and everyone benefits — men and women.
