Quotas

Women may get 79 or 14 percent of the total seats in the House of Representatives following April's legislative election; a figure that was lower than the historic high of 18 percent or 103 seats in the 2009 election, researchers said Monday.

This is despite more women candidates, accounting for 37 percent or 2,467 of the total 6,619 candidates, contesting the 560 House seats.

“Slovene politics is no longer a boys-only game”, said the Slovene prime minister Alenka Bratušek on 8.3.2013. 

Ever since women’s reserved seats have been introduced in the legislative houses, women occupying these seats have become a thorn in many eyes. Not a day has passed when in the corridors of the parliament sarcastic remarks aren’t heard. Men from across the parties are routinely heard sneering at women on reserved seats for being ‘non-representative’ and many a times for being ‘non-productive’. Men and women who come to the legislative houses after winning general elections often belittle women on reserved seats on public forum.

Mrs Freda Prempeh, Member of Parliament (MP) for Tano North, at the weekend emphasised that a “Legislative Quota Seat” system is urgently required in Ghana’s electoral laws to consolidate the country’s fledging democracy.

“Legislative Quota Seat “, she explained, is a system that allocates specific percentage of parliamentary seats to women.

Speaking to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in an interview in Sunyani, Mrs Prempeh regretted that women participation in politics continued to dwindle though they represented about 52 percent of the national population.