by KINGLEY IGHOBOR
Senegal’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (left) and Joyce Banda, former president of MAlawi
Johnson Sirleaf, who has occupied Liberia’s highest office since January 2006. Glowing in African attire, both leaders bantered like sisters during a press conference.
“This is our day, this is our year, this is our decade,” enthused Banda. “The two of us have great strength,” added Sirleaf. “Together, we can do more to empower women and to ensure that women’s role in society is enhanced.”
After the media event, Duncan Cassell, Liberia’s gender minister, said, “Now we have Joyce [Banda]. Ms. Sirleaf is not going to be lonely among men anymore.”
To be sure, before Banda became president, photos of African leaders at African Union summits, for example, depicted a group of men surrounding Sirleaf, who had been the only female president in Africa then.
Gender equality advocates had further reason to celebrate when Catherine Samba-Panza was sworn in on 23 January 2014 as interim president of the Central African Republic (CAR), making her the fourth African female head of state.
The first was Ruth Perry, who headed the Liberian transitional government for about a year from September 1996.
Regrettably, Banda, the second woman to be seated as president, became the first to be unseated when she lost the elections, in what some say was a retaking of power by loyalists of the late President Bingu wa Mutharika.
Rwanda leads the world
“One of the most fascinating developments in African politics has been the increase in women’s political participation since the mid-1990s,” writes Aili Mari Tripp, a professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US.
Besides the four female heads of state, Tripp bases her upbeat assessment on the increasing number of women parliamentarians on the continent.
Indeed, with 64% of seats held by women, Rwanda has the highest number of women parliamentarians in the world.
Senegal, Seychelles and South Africa have more than 40% each, and Mozambique, Angola, Tanzania and Uganda are not far off, with women occupying over 35% of all parliamentary seats.
Considering that women hold only 19% of the seats in the US congress and 20% in the senate, Tripp maintains that Africa has every right to be proud.
What she did not say is that American women hold top positions in ministries, military and other top government departments, which is not the case in most African countries.
However, a survey on women’s participation in politics in 34 African countries by Afrobarometer, a research group that measures public perceptions of socioeconomic and political issues in Africa, notes that while countries such as Rwanda and South Africa may have numerically significant women’s parliamentary representation, some of the world’s worst performers are also on the continent.
For example, women have only 6.2% representation in Swaziland, 6.7% in Nigeria and 8.4% in Benin.
The Africa Report for more