Makinda Called for Gender Sensitive Parliaments

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.