With 41 female lawmakers, more than twice the number from the previous election, Sierra Leone’s next parliament will have the highest percentage of female lawmakers in its history.
According to activists, the figure might have been higher had a new law that reserves 30% of leadership positions for women been properly implemented.
The primary reason Rugiatu Neneh Turay entered politics in 2007 was to oppose female genital mutilation. She claims that after serving one term on a municipal council, her political party turned her down three times for a second term.
She claims she received the second-highest number of votes in one election for two council seats, but her party appointed a male to the position after the vote.
“I have always made the votes, but the leadership doesn’t think I fit into the criteria they want. I am looked at like somebody who cannot be bent, somebody they consider to say, ‘She will not just accept things, you know,'” Turay told newsmen.
Even after President Julius Maada Bio signed the Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Act, or GEWE, which mandates that women hold 30% of all publicly elected seats and government leadership roles, female activists in Sierra Leone claimed that kind of manipulation is keeping the number of women in office low.
According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s women in parliament index, Sierra Leone’s parliament had just 12% female representation prior to the most recent elections, which was much lower than the global average of 26.4%.
Only four out of the 32 cabinet seats in the administration were held by women, which is also much less than the global average. GEWE aimed to change that.
The 11-year civil war that concluded in 2002 in Sierra Leone, according to Marcella Samba-Sesay, executive director of the Campaign for Good Governance in Sierra Leone, is what gave rise to the law.
“This was born out of the fact that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report after the war noted that whole groups were excluded from mainstream politics and did not know how decisions were made. And part of those groups were marginalised entities such as women and young people,” Samba-Sesay said.
Since the implementation of GEWE this year, female lawmakers were voted into 41 of 135 parliamentary seats, more than double the number in the last parliament. Advocates have applauded the success of the bill so far but say it is being applied unevenly.
Under Sierra Leone’s election system, voters cast ballots for a party, not an individual. Parties then fill the seats they’ve won from a ranked list of party members.