Women’s struggle for representation in African political structure

Abstract

The current clouding situations in most African countries are as a result of the colonial legacy and the enormous economic challenges. It is not surprising that many of these African countries have struggled over the past few decades to find political stability. While much research has been dedicated to provide solutions to ‘Africa’s democracy problem,’ one often heard argument is that if these countries were to include more women in politics, democracy could become a reality in order to close the gap of gender imbalance. There has been low representation of women in political issues which may have a close link to socio-cultural factors, just before the emergence of democracy, South Africa in 1994 for instance, have merely only 2.7% representation of women in parliament; since then, things have changed. However, the United Nations report shows some that sub-Saharan countries has significantly increased the number of women in parliament, and national assemblies than unlikely, ‘democratic’ countries. Findings in this paper shows that Rwanda in-spite of being one of the poorest country on the planet, the level of women representation in parliament (68%) in sub-Saharan Africa political structure, is higher than many wealthier nations around the world. There are three fundamental share frameworks in Africa which are responsible for the achievements of more women in parliament: Constitutional quota, Electoral law, and Political assembly standards. This study utilized a qualitative approach in analysing data.

Keywords: representation; conjugal status; political representative; Gender Equality; Economic Development