Women MPs show the world they are agents of change

Madame Speaker Hon. Anne Makinda gives her comments to the delegates of the 57th CPA Conference in London, during the CPA workshop with the theme "Women as agent of Change. Where are we Now? The way Forward" More than 100 Women Speakers, Senators, and Mps had an opportunity to discuss different issues aiming at empowering women in decision bodies across commonwealth Countries. on Her Right side is the Speaker of Rwandan Parliament Hon. Rose Mukantabana, far on her right is Senator Doris Brodi from Malaysia.

Madame Speaker from Rwanda Hon. Rose Mukantabana gives her comments to the delegates of the 57th CPA Conference in London, during the CPA workshop with the theme "Women as agent of Change. Where are we Now? The way Forward" More than 100 Women Speakers, Senators, and Mps had an opportunity to discuss different issues aiming at empowering women in decision bodies across commonwealth Countries. on Her Right side is Senator Doris Brodi from Malaysia and left is Speaker of National Assembly of Tanzania Hon. Anne Makinda.

Speaker of Ugandan National Assembly Hon. Rebecaa kadaga stresses a point when she moderates the CPA workshop with the theme "Women as agent of Change. Where are we Now? during the 57th CPA Conference in London. More than 100 Women Speakers, Senators, and Mps had an opportunity to discuss different issues aiming at empowering women in decision bodies across commonwealth Countries.

Speaker Makinda in an exclusve Interview with Ayoub Mzee from Ben TV based on Uk after the CPA workshop with the theme "Women as agent of Change. Where are we Now? during the 57th CPA Conference in London.Photo By Owen Mwandumbya.

By Owen Mwandumbya – LONDON

The importance of breaking down barriers and continuing the fight for emancipation was a plank of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association‟s conference in London. From July 21, the 300 parliamentarians – one quarter of them women - was examining and debating innovative new ways to strive to improve the representation of women at the cutting edge of democratic reform. 


 The Commonwealth‟s aim is to have a 30 per cent representation of women in parliament but at last count it had reached just 20 per cent - 1,778 women compared to 7,206 men elected to parliaments across the 54 nations. Although still some way short of the target, Commonwealth nations have achieved yielded some heartening results that deserve being

seen as beacons of change by other parts of the world. Rwanda, for example, the Commonwealth‟s newest member, has the only Parliament in the world in which there are more women than men (54 women to 52 men). 


South Africa has also made major inroads with 194 women of 454 MPs (42 per cent) is ranked second highest while Tanzania with 129 women of 350 and Uganda, with 102 women of 326 MPs (31 per cent) ranks higher than Australia (64 of 226 or 28 per cent), Canada (100 of 401 or 25 per cent or the UK (with just 290 women of 1383 or 21 per cent).

Only two national leaders however are women: the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, and the Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

The empowerment of women, says Professor Amartya Sen, Nobel laureate, esteemed Chair of the Commonwealth‟s Commission on Respect and Understanding and a self described “feminist economist”, is probably the single most important issue in the process of national development: “The factors involved are education, the pattern of ownership, employment opportunities, the labour market,” “Women”, he says succinctly, “should be seen as agents of change, not objects of change”.

The Lord Speaker Baroness Hayman – and co-host of the conference – argues that the greatest power of investment in women lies with the fact that it is not solely investment in an individual but in a family, a community, a whole society: “That is the economic and hard-headed argument for enabling women, because countries and nations need the participation of women if they are to thrive and develop”.

One of the Commonwealth‟s most deep-rooted values is of course a humanism which embraces the belief that every individual – whether a person or a nation – is of worth and can contribute to the good of the whole. 


Expanding the role of women in democracy has been a goal of the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians (CWP) since its inception in 1989 and triennial meetings have provided ministers, senior officials and civil society organizations to concentrate their ideas on gender equality and empowerment for women. 


The report of the Eminent Persons Group, set up to explore and chart new courses for the Commonwealth and due to report to CHOGM in October, will also identify where improvements can be made and new impetus injected.

The Royal Commonwealth Society, this year, encapsulated vividly the status of women in many parts of the world in its report „Because You‟re a Girl – Growing Up in the Commonwealth‟. Poverty, concluded the report, still affects the lives of women more than men; the culture of sex selection of abortions remains and is rife; women continue to die in childbirth at horrifying rates, parliamentary representation remains below target as does the education of girls.

The eight point report card on the Commonwealth‟s 54 nations yielded some surprises: richer countries such as New Zealand for example might rank highly in criteria such as life expectancy, education, wages, service access – but its parliamentary representation was well below that of many less economically fortunate countries, including Rwanda, Mozambique and Malawi. In Barbados, in Trinidad/Tobago, in Dominica and the Seychelles, more women figure as agents of democratic change than their counterparts in nations such as Australia, Canada, Singapore and the UK.

Still, there is little room for self satisfaction. A mid-term review of the Commonwealth Plan of Action for Gender Equality, which began in 2005 with a 10-year time frame for action in areas including human rights, poverty, democracy, peace and conflict, last year identified serious “lapses” in implementing and monitoring strategies while a subsequent review found that energy and momentum towards gender equality and focus on gender mainstreaming as a tool has “diminished over the past ten years”.

The CPA conference was, without doubt, provided a fresh new impetus and a unique opportunity for men and women from 137 legislatures to explore what are some of the most vexed and pressing gender issues of our time, from an exploration of women as agents of change in small societies to the need for improved youth leadership, training and citizen involvement in parliamentary reform.

Women are without doubt agents of change within the Commonwealth. The conundrum now is to find a united way forward.