President Wants More Women in Parliament
Last week, the president told the 52nd legislature of Liberia that Namibia has achieved 31 percent of women representation in decision-making positions. However, that is not enough.Namibia at Cabinet level has 26 percent female representation while at Parliament level, the country has achieved 31 percent representation.
“We are determined to narrow the gap further at the next general elections due at the end of this year,” said the President.Namibia is one of the countries where gender bias exists with men garnering the lion’s share at different levels of decision-making. The President early this year urged political parties to include women on their party lists.
While women participate in development in different and meaningful ways, women’s contributions continue to be undervalued due to male dominated cultures that have assigned women inferior positions in society.Taboos, outdated customs and norms have for centuries kept women subordinated to men, the President told Liberian members of legislature.
He added that archaic economic, social and cultural factors have all converged in such a way that development policies exclude the real and potential social and economic contributions of women.“These feudal and primitive attitudes have to change. They must change radically, and they must change now,” emphasised the President.Namibia is signatory to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Protocol on Gender and Development.
The country is among the countries in the SADC region that adopted the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development in South Africa last year.The protocol calls for 50 percent representation by women at all levels of government by 2015. It demands that member states put in place measures that will advance the process of women’s emancipation through policies, laws, programmes and projects.
During the past elections, Namibia was unable to increase the proportion of women to men as candidates to be voted for because not all parties submitted “zebra lists”.It is unclear whether there will be any piece of legislation that will make it mandatory for political parties to apply a zebra system when drawing up their party lists for elections this year.
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