AS the Federal Government intensifies efforts at achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), grassroots women leaders have observed that the continued exclusion of women from decision-making governance structures contributes to poor development indices and high rate of maternal mortality and morbidity.
This, according to the women leaders, occur because those who make decisions on women’s and children’s welfare are mostly men who do not appreciate women’s needs.
This position was contained in a communique issued at the end of a one-day meeting of stakeholders on women’s participation in governance at the local level organised by Community Life Project (CLP) and held at the John Paul II Pastoral Centre, Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti State recently.
According to the women, access to decision-making positions within political parties and governance was a right to which women were entitled and “this right is being violated with the exclusion of women from leadership positions.”
They posited that only women who were privileged by birth and marriage have managed to gain access to leadership positions in political structures and governance organs to the disadvantage of grass-roots and low-income women.
The women leaders urged political parties to ensure that at least 40,000 local government chairmanship positions should be contested exclusively by women since it is the level of governance that deals more with their welfare and those of children.
“Women should make up 5,000 of key political positions both within the party and governance structures.
“For example, Speakers of Houses of Assembly, leaders of the House, chairpersons of House committees,” the participants advocated adding that, “50 per cent of delegates to party conventions, congresses at ward, local government and state levels should be reserved for women delegates,” they said.
The women leaders, who identified factors such as male dominance of the political space, violence, nocturnal meeting times, money politics and godfatherism as impeding meaningful participation of women in the political process, said political parties should ensure that positions of chairperson, treasurer and secretary of political parties were occupied by women.
The participants, drawn from two major political parties, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), declared that access to decision-making positions within political parties and government was a right women were entitled to.