December 13, 2017 By Patrick Jaiah Kamara
The Fifty-Fifty group of Sierra Leone yesterday engaged media practitioners on how to portray women who are yearning for political leadership in the country.
The one-day training which was hosted at the 50/50 group head office on Tower Hill on the theme: Breaking barriers: Empowering media practitioners to understand powerful positive female representation, attracted over twenty media practitioners with women dominating their male counterparts.
The lead facilitator, Dr. Nemata Majeks-Walker, who also doubles as founder of the group started off by stating that representation of women in elected bodies have been far short of numbers in the population as a whole.
She noted that only 8% of women were in parliament before the inauguration of the Group, but stated such was changing gradually as more women were now in parliament though they were yet to meet their target.
“Even though women contribute 52% of the total population, only 13.5% are lawmakers as of the last parliament. 7% Mayoral or council chairs, 11% in national executive and 18.9% in local councils,” she said.
She noted that development of training manuals, holding campaign training in schools and women candidate debates were some of the strategies they used to build the capacity of women.
She however expressed dismay over government’s refusal to pass into law the 30% women representation in governance.
She stated that President Koroma’s government hasn’t passed into law any gender act, and that the launch of the Constitutional Review Committee (CRC) was an opportunity for them as they factored in the 30% quota representation in the recommendations but government White Paper ignored it.
“The president appointed a lot more women in positions but we are yearning for the law to be there. Because what president A has done B may not do it,” she said.
Another facilitator, Emmanuel Jah, encouraged journalists to create a level platform for women to give their views on issues concerning governance.