10 Mar 2013

Some Batswana women have assumed leadership roles in administration and corporate world. Assistant Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Ms Botlogile Tshireletso said this in a statement she delivered in Parliament on March 8 on the commemoration of the international women’s day.

Ms Tshireletso said a lot still needed to be done to engage women in power and decision-making, adding that statistics showed that 21 per cent of women as compared to close to 80 per cent of men headed key private institutions.

She said around 19 per cent of women against 80 per cent of men held decision-making positions in trade unions. Ms Tshireletso added that a significant percentage of the nation’s women continued to participate minimally in creation of wealth and household income owing to disparity in ownership of land or farms, livestock and share of employment in non-agricultural employment, which she said tended to be skewed in favour of men.

The assistant minister, also the Parliamentary Caucus on Women chairperson, indicated that they were concerned about the acute gender imbalance in the political area, where she said participation trend portrayed a drastic reduction from 18.2 per cent during the eighth Parliament to 11.5 per cent in the ninth down to 6.6 per cent in the tenth sitting.

She further said the caucus was also disturbed by representation of women voices, which she said stood at a paltry 17.4 per cent in cabinet and 20.6 per cent in councils.

To address the imbalance in political representation, Ms Tshireletso said women parliamentarians had thus pledged to steer a gender momentum by encouraging women participation in next year’s general elections.

“It is our hope that through holding sensitisation workshops, providing a platform for dialogue and through effective publicity, issues concerning the girl child and gender mainstreaming in all policies would be adequately addressed for the betterment of human livelihoods and sustainable economic development,” she said.

As a result, she noted that the Women Parliamentary Caucus, in collaboration with the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) will hold a development planning and gender mainstreaming workshop in May to promote the role of parliamentarians for effective advocacy on gender based policy formulation.

Ms Tshireletso also expressed concern about the increasing rate of gender based violence, which she said had prompted government to adopt a legal reform that has initiated a review of laws, which discriminated against women and to enact responsive ones.

She urged government and the public to strengthen measures to stop gender based violence incidences from happening despite all initiatives by government and other stakeholders to address crime against women. “And we remain resolute in the fight against this scourge,” she said. ENDS