Why many women don’t run for political office
Source: Nation Africa
I have lost count of the number of women I have met, telling me they wanted to run for political office. Good women, with real ideas about the leadership their counties or wards were missing. Each of them spoke of her plans with real conviction. And then, more often than not, the conversation ended the same way: She decided against it, and went back to the job or the business she already had.
Why? The answer is hardly about ability, or money, though the latter matters a lot. She already knows what awaits her the moment she puts her name forward. People will judge her marriage and question her morals; something that does not happen to men. She then decides the seat is not worth what she would have to give up to hold it.
These decisions are not recorded anywhere, not in newspapers, digital platforms or television. There is even no survey that counts the women who stepped back before being declared as candidates. But every seat that goes uncontested by a capable woman is filled instead by someone who never had to run that same calculation.
I have lost count of the number of women I have met, telling me they wanted to run for political office. Good women, with real ideas about the leadership their counties or wards were missing. Each of them spoke of her plans with real conviction. And then, more often than not, the conversation ended the same way: She decided against it, and went back to the job or the business she already had.
Why? The answer is hardly about ability, or money, though the latter matters a lot. She already knows what awaits her the moment she puts her name forward. People will judge her marriage and question her morals; something that does not happen to men. She then decides the seat is not worth what she would have to give up to hold it.
These decisions are not recorded anywhere, not in newspapers, digital platforms or television. There is even no survey that counts the women who stepped back before being declared as candidates. But every seat that goes uncontested by a capable woman is filled instead by someone who never had to run that same calculation.