Thato Chwaane
9 April 2008
Gaborone — The National Assembly has passed the Statute Law (Miscellaneous Amendment) Bill 2008 as a way to promote gender equality, the new Minister of Labour and Home Affairs, Peter Siele, revealed yesterday.
Siele said the Bill sought to make consequential amendments to other laws to bring about equality between spouses whom marital power placed on the legal capacity of a wife and replace it with equal powers. He said other consequential amendments made were the Pensions Act, the Married Persons Property Act, the Matrimonial Causes Act, the Administration of Estates Act, the Deeds Registry Act and the Companies Act.
Siele was speaking at the beginning of a three-day assertiveness training and gender sensitisation workshop for aspiring women politicians at the President Hotel. He said there was still a lot to be done in the area of the political empowerment of women, adding that politics was a game that one has to understand before becoming a participant. He said that the participation of women in decision making at all levels of public and private life was an issue of human rights as well as of strengthening the democratic process. He said although there were no legal restrictions on women to stand for any elected public office, many women still did not benefit from such opportunities. Siele wondered what could be going wrong as women tended to be more active than men in political mobilization. "Is it that women do not have the confidence to elect one another or is it that women lack the confidence to stand for positions of responsibility?" he asked. Siele urged women to campaign for each other as they did for men.
Meanwhile, Lydia Matebesi, an HIV/AIDS Programme Specialist at UNDP, said it is good to vote for another woman who can better represent the interests of women. She said to the women participants that it is not an impossible mission to vote men out of power. She noted that it has been proven that women are less corrupt. "Why not vote those less corrupt?" she asked, and called for a study on why women do not vote other women. Matebesi said it is for the ruling government to appoint more women to Cabinet and for parastatals to appoint women as chief executive officers. To the women, she advised that they should work with men and hold their hands.
"Let's be strategic," she said. She told them not to be at the back cooking and in choirs, but rather at the forefront in the campaigns. The newly appointed director of MISA Botswana Thapelo Ndlovu said women should be assertive and not play 'victim.' He urged them to learn to work with the media and probe why a man is more likely to be interviewed than a woman.
The workshop is meant to empower women politicians to establish strategic partnerships for effective campaigns and train aspiring women politicians on campaign management to enhance a successful campaign process, amongst others.
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