WOMEN’S MONTH NOTHING TO SMILE ABOUT FOR WOMEN

MBABANE – This being Women’s Month but women in the country have something to smile about.

They are into half a century of being eligible to vote as suffrage was granted in 1968 in the country.
This was three years after Botswana and Lesotho but 43 years ahead of Saudi Arabia.

Despite this milestone in being able to vote, women in the country are trailing behind politically.
In the last elections, only one female was elected into Parliament.

National Director of Women and Law Southern Africa - Swaziland, Colani Hlashwayo, said Swaziland had a conducive policy environment for inclusion of women in positions of power and decision making.

She noted that the National Constitution provides for at least 30 per cent representation in Parliament, however, two consecutive elections (2008 and 2013 national elections) could not meet the target set by the Constitution.
The bar was even higher at the SADC and African Union Level where the representation was set at 50 per cent.

Hlashwayo said the country had remained below the bar when comparing with other countries in the region (Gender Barometer 2016).
“The representation of women in Parliament has fallen from 22 percent in 2008 to 15 per cent in 2013. In the 2013 elections, only 15 per cent of parliamentarians were in the early stages of the elections process where fewer women were nominated for all positions and even fewer got voted into the parliamentary structure.”

She said her organisation had established that at the nomination stage for Bucopho (Constituency Council), out of 69.6 per cent male nominees, 30.4 per cent were females while on Indvuna yenkhundla (constituency head person, 78.6 per cent were male nominees and only 21.4 per cent were females, the lowest was that of MPs where only 15 per cent were females nominees whilst men were 85 per cent.
This, she said, was substantiated in the study on Women in Leadership Position, 2013.

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