by DIANA HOJLUND MADSEN & AMANDA GOUWS
Only a quarter of parliamentary seats across the world are occupied by women. In Africa, this figure masks a very uneven development with high numbers in countries like Rwanda (64%) and South Africa (46%). At the other end of the spectrum is Ghana (14%), Botswana (10%) and Nigeria (3%).
In the last two decades there have been renewed efforts to promote gender equality in political participation in the hope that more women in parliament would put women’s needs and issues on the political agenda and drive policy interventions that promote gender equality.
A new book, Gendered Institutions and Women’s Political Representation in Africa, examines the intricate dynamics of the formal and informal institutions influencing women’s political representation in eight African countries. In this article we reflect on South Africa and Ghana.
In South Africa, the ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC) introduced a 30% quota before the first democratic elections in 1994. In 2009 it changed this to a 50% quota for women in parliament. That has not yet been achieved. The country’s parliament is made up of 400 members, 249 of whom belong to the ANC. Other parties do not have quotas for women.
In the case of Ghana, efforts are only now underway to get a bill through parliament that would even participation and representation. Currently, only 14% of the country’s parliamentarians are women.
In both countries informal institutions – shared norms and unwritten rules – remain stubbornly entrenched and continue to work against meaningful gender representation. In many cases, these work against or parallel with formal institutions.
We conclude that the solution lies in addressing the informal constraints and ensuring gender mainstreaming in the political parties themselves in both countries.
The case of Ghana
Ghana was the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to introduce a quota for women in parliament. In 1959 it earmarked 10 seats for women out of a total of 114. But this initiative ended when Nkrumah was deposed in 1966.
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