Women’s Place in Politics, Focusing on the African Union Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa: the Case of Nigeria
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Date
2008-07
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This study is on the place of women in politics with focus on the African Union’s Solemn Declaration
on Gender Equality in Africa, in terms of the awareness, support for implementation, views of male
parliamentarians about the declaration, factors responsible for poor representation of women in
parliament, and political aspirations among business women. The main purpose was to know the
level of implementation of the declaration, and to find out why there is still a huge gender gap (less
than 8%) in the parliament, since Nigeria has carried out an election in 2007, three years after
signing this AU declaration.
Quantitative and qualitative research methods were used to collect primary data/information for
analysis of the set objectives. There was a triangulation of the primary data (quantitative and
qualitative) together with some secondary data from the official documents. The results indicated
that there is still lack of adequate awareness of the declaration among concerned bodies such as, the
parliamentarians, political parties, women organization and the society in general. The study also
revealed that all the coordinated efforts for gender balance in politics in Nigeria have yielded little
or no significant result judging from the fact that the nation conducted last election in 2007. Also
findings on the political aspirations of women in business which make up a large percentage of
women in Nigeria indicated they have high aspiration to participate in politics, but are being
discouraged by a number of personal and societal factors, top of them being violence and
intimidation in politics. There is need for a more radical step such as the use of affirmative action or
any other deliberate strategy for gender equity in politics to occur in Nigeria.
However, the optimism is that the findings revealed that the government gender machinery, namely
the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Youth Development in Nigeria have gender parity as its
priority with the development of a National Gender Policy even though the AU declaration is not
independently focused on. Rather, there are general efforts on gender mainstreaming focusing on all
the international and local instruments ratified and signed by Nigeria. The ministry is working in
collaboration with both government and non – governmental agencies and political parties to deal with the issue of gender inequality in politics in Nigeria. Also on the awareness and implementation,
Civil Societies working in the area of democracy and politics are involved in various programs to support proposals for constitutional reforms and adoption of affirmative action to cut the gender gap in politics
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Gender Studies