Stockholm professor advises Sierra Leone conference on gender quotas

The event was organised by the NGO Campaign for Good Governance (CGG), and partly funded by the funded by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Dahlerup, who works for the University's Women in Politics Research Centre (WiP),  is one of the leading experts on electoral gender quotas in the world. In 2006 she edited "Women Quotas and Politics" (Routledge) – the first global study to introduce gender quotas to rapidly improve women's representation in parliament.

"My colleague Lenita Freidenvall and I are invited to conferences all over the world to speak about gender quotas," says Professor Dahlerup. "It is such a hot issue, that we have to say no to many invitations."

In Sierra Leone Dahlerup presented different examples of gender quotas in politics to a large and lively conference audience that included the President's wife and several government officials, as well as representatives for women's organisations from all over Sierra Leone.

"From separate meetings on December 14-15, 2009 with parliamentarians, political party leaders, the Law Reform commission, PPRC and the National Human Rights Commission and from listening to and discussing with other experts as well as with representatives from various women’s organizations at the national conference I received the impression that the demand for special measures such as quotas is now well founded among politicians and women’s organizations in Sierra Leone," says Dahlerup.

The Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established after the civil war, recommended a thirty percent representation of women in all political assemblies in order to better involve women in the process of development and democratization of the country. Now they are looking to push the figure closer to fifty percent.

Professor Dahlerup, who complied a positioning paper for the Campaign for Good Governance in Sierra Leone, has now completed a list of recommendations that will hopefully help the the country reach this target.

"Half the countries in the world have now adopted some type of gender quotas for their parliament," says Dahlerup, "but as an expert of different types of quota systems and how they match different electoral systems I am often invited when women's organizations and politca parties have started a quote discussion and are seeking advice about which types of quotas to advocate."

Professor Dahlerup will be speaking to the Polish parliament on February 16, and at the United Nations in New York on March 8 in conjunction with women's organizations discussing discuss quotas with senior politicians.

Text: Jon Buscall