Speaker of the National Assembly Hon. Anne Makinda stressing a point during a panel discussion on Gender Sensitive Parliaments during the 127 Conference of the Inter- Parliamentary Union. Left is the Chairman of the Irish Senate Hon. Puddy Burke and Centre is Ms. Jemini Pandya, Director of Communication at IPU. Makinda was selected to join the panel because her parliament is among worlds parliament which are more gender sensitive and the Constitution of Tanzania stated clear the percentage of Women Parliament in the Parliament. Photo by Owen Mwandumbya.
By Owen Mwandumbya, Quebec, Canada
Increasing representation for women in Parliament
is important but the legislative body should also mould its codes, ethics and
practices to truly ensure equitable treatment of women, the Speaker of National
Assembly of Tanzania says during the panel discussion on Special Gender
Partnership debate Session.
Makinda, also feels that achieving equality
without a legal framework is difficult. She was sharing her experience of Tanzania
with the delegates of the 127 - Inter-parliamentary Union (IPU) Conference
which is taking place in the city of Quebec, Canada
The IPU, 162 member-countries, has been stressing
on the need to have more women in parliaments and they both agreed that this
would not be possible unless some kind of affirmative action is put in place
among their August House.
Tanzania, a country of more than 45 Million, has
a dismal 36 percent of women in the 367 member of the Parliament. A move is the
result of clear requirement of the countries constitution, and majority joined
through affirmative action with few representing constitution.
Makinda said that parliaments have to be made a
"comfortable workplace" for women.
"We have to make our parliaments a workplace
where women can be comfortable and even if they are overwhelmed by their
domestic issues, the rules and regulations should let them be flexible,"
Makinda told IPU Delegates during the discussion
"Things like the time of feeding their
children, functioning, the facilities that are provided - should all be
suitable for them. The codes, ethics, resources, staff of Parliament... all
have to be moulded accordingly, because politics and parliaments have primarily
been men's business," She said.
She also said that equitable treatment in
parliament is also important and women should not be sidelined in various
parliamentary panels.
"There should be equal representation of
both genders in every committee. So they can perhaps make a rule that any
committee cannot have more percents of members of one gender” She added.
He said that across the world, the level of
representation of women "is not very brilliant as you can see".
"Less than 20 percent of parliamentarians in
the world are women. And it took us long years to reach here from the time when
it was a mere 10 percent, but Rwanda have now exceeds more than 50 Percent and
that is our aim now" She said.
As per data compiled by the IPU, 20 percent of
members of parliament across the world are women. Region-wise, Scandinavian
countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) have the highest
representation of 42 percent, Asia has 18.5 percent women in parliament.
"The point is that this is not acceptable.
We need to get more women in parliaments, and we need to have special measures.
We would fool ourselves if we say we don't need legislation," She
commended.
The topic for 127 IPU Conference are Citizenship,
identify and linguistic and culture diversity in a globalized world, Enforcing
the Responsibility to protect the Role of Parliament in Safeguarding civilians
lives, Fair Trade and innovative financing mechanism for sustainable
development, The use of media including social Media to enhance citizen
engagement and democracy, and this special panel discussion on Gender Sensitive
Parliament.
The discussion during this topic was focus on
making parliament gender-sensitive, and sharing some experiences from other
parliament where more male Mps were encouraged to attend.
Makinda was accompanied by the Irish Chairman of
the Senate Hon. Paddy Burke and the session was moderated by Jemini Pandya,
Director of Communication at IPU. The Geneva-based Inter-Parliamentary Union,
which is an important non-Governmental parliamentary institution, was founded
more than 110 years ago.
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