Topic: Encouraging Political Participation by Women
Country: Botswana
Delegate Name: Annie Cardinale
School: Royal Oak High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Botswana position papers GLIMUN 2017 committees
As of right now, women aren’t usually as involved in politics as men are. Currently, in 46 countries, women now hold more than 30 percent of seats in national parliament in at least one chamber. In addition to this, a current goal of the UN is to ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision making in political, economic and public life. As well as this, the African Union is also trying to gain women’s participation in politics. Gaining women participation in politics can be done through a number of ways.
Currently, Botswana’s majority of voters are women. Women play an active role in politics in the nation of Botswana. They go out and conduct door to door campaigns and recruit members for their parties. Botswana has not signed the SADC Gender Protocol Barometer because the timeframes are unrealistic, so the delegation of Botswana hopes that we can fix the timelines for the outcome. Botswana is one of three countries in Africa that women occupy more than 30 percent of women on Permanent Secretaries.
How do we get more women involved with politics? Well, one option is affirmative action. By having affirmative action for women who enter politics, we could possibly have more women joining politics. Another action we could take is educating the citizens of a way to have women increase their role in politics. Informing women that they have a chance to possibly make a change in their nations is a good way to get women involved in politics.
In conclusion, Botswana hopes by using a combination of affirmative action and education of women to make them more informed on political matters, the world as a whole can gain the participation of more women in politics. As well as this, changing previous policies to better suit females would be optimal. The delegation of Botswana hopes to make the world as a whole more inclusive to having women being involved in politics, rather than having the majority of roles be filled by men.
