Quo Vadis The Gender Debate?

THE politics of gender continue to remain at the centre of our national debate.

What is interesting about this debate, notably within Swapo, is that it is getting the attention it deserves and in recent years, perhaps more so than any other issue. The last Swapo Women’s League congress, followed shortly by the Party Central Committee, gave the gender debate further impetus through the latter’s resolution to push gender representation to the level of fifty per cent for the next legislative and presidential elections, generating in the process new converts and inevitably, enemies.What drives this sudden surge on the part of the chief sponsor of gender equality within Swapo, its President Sam Nujoma, and the reasons for such unparalleled attention, cannot be evacuated from our analyses.First, it is very hard to tell if such attention is the result of effective mobilisation on the part of women within the ruling party and Namibia in general since Independence.To be sure, women were part of the liberation struggle, played a decisive role in it, but they were still thinly represented on the radar of the political leadership.A solid reason that many sociologists would prettify and use to explain the special place that gender occupies in Swapo is “socialisation”.On a continental and regional level, gender has assumed a primordial place and this finds lucid explanation in the number of declarations that set targets to increase gender representation in decision-making structures.Through such interactions and declarations, the founding president might have been socialised into the moral correctness of greater gender representation in the political life of our country.That we will grant to him.Another reason, which might be shallow and would have many candidates against it, but one that has impressed me, is the probable instrumentalisation of the gender vote within the ruling party.The party president, whilst he was Head of State, didn’t push aggressively for greater gender representation through Cabinet appointments and the public sector (and he could).This doesn’t suggest that it is a new issue in his final vocabulary or rhetoric, but when practice tells a different story, questions abound.In essence, the gender push, on the part of the founding President, has never really gone beyond party politics and that alone might put into difficulty his noble intentions.And I think that this is where we need to shift the debate from its current feet-first approach to a head-first approach.This feet-first approach, also accentuated by women politicians, is flawed for reasons that I will explain.We tend to confuse the gender debate and hold on to the idea that it is one which is first and foremost of a political nature.As a consequence, we erroneously believe that we are likely to reconfigure gender politics through greater representation of women in political decision-making.Such a political conception has been accepted as the standard operating procedure and women politicians, with their sponsors, have reduced this discussion to a political conquest for a few well-placed women.Yet, I don’t believe that taking a nurse, appointing her as Speaker of the National Assembly will change how her male colleagues look at her.The case of Edith Cresson, the first French female prime minister in the 1990s, is instructive for despite her being Prime Minister as she would later narrate, her male colleagues would shout “à poil” (strip naked) during the afternoon sessions of the National Assembly.And recently, a French male argued in a private discussion that he wouldn’t vote for Segolène Royal (the French Socialist candidate for the 2007 presidential elections) because women take three weeks to decide on what clothes to buy.What this tells us is that embedding gender equality as a political ideal is less likely to change gender relations in our society, but it could generate resentment as is evident in the ruling party.The political aspect is only but part of the solution and the debate goes further than that.Solutions to the politics of gender are largely to be found in the reconstruction of our social franchise and it’s where our male and female politicians should shift their attention for a new gender consensus.How do we recast our society in a way in which males look through an altered prism at their female counterparts, through a different education, social and cultural values? For women to play a bigger part in our society, we need to transform fundamentally cultural and personal relationships, instead of only focussing on political structures.We need to focus our energies here, at the base instead of our wishy-washy top-bottom approach.* Alfredo Tjiurimo Hengari is a PhD fellow at the University of Paris Panthéon-Sorbonne in France.The last Swapo Women’s League congress, followed shortly by the Party Central Committee, gave the gender debate further impetus through the latter’s resolution to push gender representation to the level of fifty per cent for the next legislative and presidential elections, generating in the process new converts and inevitably, enemies.What drives this sudden surge on the part of the chief sponsor of gender equality within Swapo, its President Sam Nujoma, and the reasons for such unparalleled attention, cannot be evacuated from our analyses.First, it is very hard to tell if such attention is the result of effective mobilisation on the part of women within the ruling party and Namibia in general since Independence.To be sure, women were part of the liberation struggle, played a decisive role in it, but they were still thinly represented on the radar of the political leadership.A solid reason that many sociologists would prettify and use to explain the special place that gender occupies in Swapo is “socialisation”.On a continental and regional level, gender has assumed a primordial place and this finds lucid explanation in the number of declarations that set targets to increase gender representation in decision-making structures.Through such interactions and declarations, the founding president might have been socialised into the moral correctness of greater gender representation in the political life of our country.That we will grant to him.Another reason, which might be shallow and would have many candidates against it, but one that has impressed me, is the probable instrumentalisation of the gender vote within the ruling party.The party president, whilst he was Head of State, didn’t push aggressively for greater gender representation through Cabinet appointments and the public sector (and he could).This doesn’t suggest that it is a new issue in his final vocabulary or rhetoric, but when practice tells a different story, questions abound.In essence, the gender push, on the part of the founding President, has never really gone beyond party politics and that alone might put into difficulty his noble intentions.And I think that this is where we need to shift the debate from its current feet-first approach to a head-first approach.This feet-first approach, also accentuated by women politicians, is flawed for reasons that I will explain.We tend to confuse the gender debate and hold on to the idea that it is one which is first and foremost of a political nature.As a consequence, we erroneously believe that we are likely to reconfigure gender politics through greater representation of women in political decision-making.Such a political conception has been accepted as the standard operating procedure and women politicians, with their sponsors, have reduced this discussion to a political conquest for a few well-placed women.Yet, I don’t believe that taking a nurse, appointing her as Speaker of the National Assembly will change how her male colleagues look at her.The case of Edith Cresson, the first French female prime minister in the 1990s, is instructive for despite her being Prime Minister as she would later narrate, her male colleagues would shout “à poil” (strip naked) during the afternoon sessions of the National Assembly.And recently, a French male argued in a private discussion that he wouldn’t vote for Segolène Royal (the French Socialist candidate for the 2007 presidential elections) because women take three weeks to decide on what clothes to buy.What this tells us is that embedding gender equality as a political ideal is less likely to change gender relations in our society, but it could generate resentment as is evident in the ruling party.The political aspect is only but part of the solution and the debate goes further than that.Solutions to the politics of gender are largely to be found in the reconstruction of our social franchise and it’s where our male and female politicians should shift their attention for a new gender consensus.How do we recast our society in a way in which males look through an altered prism at their female counterparts, through a different education, social and cultural values? For women to play a bigger part in our society, we need to transform fundamentally cultural and personal relationships, instead of only focussing on political structures.We need to focus our energies here, at the base instead of our wishy-washy top-bottom approach.* Alfredo Tjiurimo Hengari is a PhD fellow at the University of Paris Panthéon-Sorbonne in France.