According to Ayisha Osori, a director in the office of the executive vice president of the Open Society Foundations, the monetization of politics in many African nations continues to be a significant barrier prohibiting many women from actively participating in politics on the continent.
According to her, many African women are at the bottom of the economic ladder, making it challenging for them to compete for political positions with their financially secure male colleagues.
On Tuesday, May 16, 2023, at the start of a two-day conference put on by the Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa (MIASA) and the University of Ghana's Centre for Gender Studies and Advocacy, Ms. Osori stated that as long as politics is about money, women will continue to be marginalized.
For her, having women in politics is essential to ensuring that women's demands are completely taken into account.
MIASA gathering
The conference, which took place in the Auditorium of the University of Ghana's Centre for Biodiversity Conservation Research, had as its topic "Increasing women's political presence in West Africa."
The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the University of Ghana jointly sponsor MIASA, an institute housed under the College of Humanities at the latter.
Leading researchers from Germany, Ghana, and other parts of the world may share ideas, network, and collaborate together at MIASA.
Through its Interdisciplinary Fellow Groups, MIASA places a priority on fostering intellectual communication between researchers of different disciplines and between junior and senior scholars.
depiction of women
"We need women in politics because society is made up of women and men with different life experiences," Ms. Osori remarked in her keynote speech on the topic of "Women's Political Power in West Africa and the Global Context of Democracy and its Discontent: The Case of Nigeria."
She argues that having both men and women in politics would result in a stronger governing system for the benefit of society and that, because men and women have different needs, it is crucial to have both of them there in order to address those needs.
In order for women to run for political office, Ms. Osori also advised them to join political parties, be identified, and be visible.
She noted that it will be challenging for women who do not belong to political parties to be permitted to compete for positions in party politics, saying that women stand to gain a lot when they join political parties and become active members.
She said that political parties only acknowledge card-bearing members and that it will be challenging for women to run on their candidate lists for any political office without first becoming card-bearing members of such parties.
Ms. Osori stated, "Parties need us; they need the people, which is why joining political parties is the way to fund the parties so that the politicians can stop using the state money to fund the parties."
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