Women Parliamentarians representing over fifty national and provincial parliaments from across the African continent have gathered at Zimbali conference centre in Ballito, outside Durban in KwaZulu-Natal, to deliberate on issues of gender equality, women empowerment and the emancipation of women in the continent.
The two-day workshop is organised by the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians (CWP) Africa Region and hosted by the KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Legislature. Its is held under the theme: Mechanisms to Strengthen Gender Equality.
Opening the “sensitization” workshop, the Chairperson of CWP Africa Region, Ms Thoko Didiza and who is the House Chair of the National Assembly of the Parliament of the Republic of South Africa said the gathering was an opportunity for women parliamentarians to share practices and experiences on women empowerment and emancipation as well as ideas on what can be done to increase women representation in parliament and in government.
“The discussions in this workshop will motivate and inspire us to achieve the goal of gender equality and women empowerment,” said Ms Didiza.
The CWP members who attended the workshop included Speakers, Deputy Speakers, Committee Chairpersons as well as ordinary members of parliament and provincial legislature.
Ms Lydia Johnson, the Speaker of Kwazulu-Natal Provincial Legislature told her colleagues to focus on what were the different parliaments doing to increase women participation in development matters and ensuring gender equity.
“Today, as we are meeting here under the theme: “Mechanisms to Strengthen Gender Equality” we need to focus on what we as parliamentarians are doing to strengthen mechanisms for gender equity.
The CWP was founded to enable women Parliamentarians with an opportunity to discuss strategies to increase representation in Parliament and work towards mainstreaming of gender considerations in all CPA activities and programmes
“Many countries including South Africa have also made strides towards improving women representation in parliaments but we are not yet there” said Ms Johnson.
She also said that the establishment of the CWP was in response to the call of increasing women’s representation in political institutions.
“CWP international encourages us as women parliamentarians to work and focus on equipping women parliamentarians with the skills or tools to lobby for the better representation of women for women issues; share experiences and information and learn about obstacles affecting women parliamentarians and women representation in politics”, she said.
She also called for amendments to the South African electoral legislation to ensure equal representation of men and women compulsory for all parties during election time.
She said there is currently no law in South Africa forcing political parties to ensure equal representation of men and women on their electoral lists.
“We need to eradicate all factors that hamper the development and empowerment of women, we must lobby for the amendment of the Independent Electoral Commission Act to make it mandatory for parties to submit lists that adhere to the 50-50 representation,” she said.
By Sakhile Mokoena
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