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The Acting President, Goodluck
Jonathan, should embrace the national gender policy that states
reserving 35 per cent of all political appointments for women and
therefore, create wider room for women to participate in governance, a
woman activist and executive director of Equity Advocates, Ene Ede, has
said.

Women activists have expressed concern
over the few women ministerial nominees on the list sent to the Senate
for screening by the Acting President.

“It is the greatest shock to see only
very few women nominated for appointment in the new list,” Ms. Ede
said. “Already, there is what some people call ‘democratic deficit’,
where women have not been accorded their right of place in the polity.
We should have been asked to manage at least 10 slots. And what is
wrong with getting the 35 per cent prescribed by the national gender
policy? Consider the services and contributions that women have
rendered to make the society more comfortable.”

Incidentally, the theme for the 2010
International Women’s Day celebration is ‘Equal rights, equal
opportunity: Prosperity for Women.’ This, Ms. Ede said, underscores the
need to give women a voice in politics, saying history has proved that
women have done exceedingly better than their male counterparts in some
cases, in both traditional and even sophisticated economies.

Qualified for any post

“A woman can head
the Ministry of Defence,” she said. “There are lots of women who have
retired from the armed forces. Why can’t we pick any of them, or are
they not qualified? They can also head power or the petroleum ministry.
If we want real and genuine change, we can get women to head some key
ministries. There is no ministry in this country that cannot be headed
by women.”

She also urged Mr. Jonathan to bring fresher faces to government so as to give his government more dynamism.

“Former President
Olusegun Obasanjo will tell you that he owes a huge part of his success
to the calibre of women he brought in,” she said. “We still have women
who can do better than men, after all we never knew they existed
before. So let us stop all these recycling. Let us see younger women
coming in.

“The Senate, too. I know they are very gender sensitive and so we
would like to see how they will bring the gender sensitivity to bear on
the screening.”