Journal #13: Rwanda: Women Hold up Half the Parliament - Elizabeth Powley

Abstract: Rwanda has the greatest number of women in national parliament. After brutal civil war, Rwandan women have not yet acquired equal status in education, employment, and access to natural resources as men. However, increasing number of women's seats in parliamentary is the first step to proceed to better representation of women in politics and in nation as a whole. Currently, the Pro-Femmes (Collectifs Pro-Femmes/Twese Hamwez: NGO for Rwandan women) is the only women organization to improve Rwandan women's social standing in the country. It has worked on drafting the constitution and obtain opinion from population by directly reaching them - This is indeed a very innovative way to make illiterate women to engage in politics and be aware of their potentiality in participation in society as a whole. This article, however, only addresses relatively optimistic view of Rwandan women's future - mainly through their large representation in parliament. (I was expecting some shortcoming that professor Ackerly talked about.) 

The only things for these - now femocrats - women in Rwanda to work on is to extend the scope of their legislations to national policies as a whole rather than focusing on gender issue. 

Although the gender equality would be their priority, it is also important to gain national popularity among men. Representation of women in politics is not to divide men and women but to equally give women to stand in the same position with male politicians to negotiate about social issues. One thing, currently in Rwanda, that questioned me was that for instance, the reserved 24 seats for women are only selected by women. I would allow this way in the beginning of transition period, but in order to get legitimacy and achieve the "real" equality in politics, the female deputies should be equally treated as male candidates. 

However, as a whole, I think, for this small country which has not yet totally recovered from 1994 genocide and civil war, this is a big first step for women to improve thier rights and strengthen their status economically and socially. 

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia

“AFRICA AND ITS PLACE IN THE WORLD”

Internationally known as Africa’s “Iron Lady,” President Sirleaf is the continent’s first elected female president and a leading promoter of peace, justice and democratic rule. She has lead her war-torn nation of Liberia in the restoration of peace and freedom, while enacting economic, social and political change. In 2009 she chronicled her journey, from an abused young wife to a powerful political figure, in the memoir This Child Will Be Great.

BACKGROUND

When Ellen Johnson was just a baby, an old man in the neighborhood pronounced, "This child shall be great." Although she and her siblings would often giggle as the story was recounted, the words proved prophetic. Young Ellen grew up to become the African continent's first elected woman president, indeed the world's first elected female black head of state.

The struggles of her amazing life--from abused wife to political prisoner to exile to leader--mirror the struggles of her nation and the African continent as they search for their place in the 21st-century global, political and economic landscape.

Liberia was founded and colonized by freed American slaves under the sponsorship of the American Colonization Society. In 1847, Liberia was founded as the first African republic, and in 1848 Joseph Jenkins Roberts, a freeborn African American from Petersburg, Virginia, became the nation's first president. President Sirleaf herself has spent time in the Commonwealth, living in Northern Virginia while working for the World Bank in the 1980s.

While Liberia's first president was a member of the so-called Americo-Liberian minority elite (importance of education for women!) that would lead the nation for many years, President Sirleaf is a descendant of Liberia's indigenous tribal people. Mutual mistrust and hostility between the "Americans" along the coast and the "natives" of the interior was a recurrent theme in the country's history, culminating in 1980 when Samuel Doe, a member of the indigenous Krahn ethnic group, seized power in a bloody military coup in which the Americo-Liberian president was assassinated and 13 members of his cabinet executed. Sirleaf was a member of that cabinet, but her tribal blood and popularity enabled her to narrowly escape the same fate. She was, however, imprisoned twice for speaking out against the abuses of ensuing governments, and she ultimately fled into exile to save her life. Mounting conflict in Liberia led to 14 years of brutal civil war that would arm the nation's children, claim hundreds of thousands of lives and decimate the nation's infrastructure, economy and world image.

Under mounting international pressure and charges of "crimes against humanity," President Charles Taylor, who had overthrown Doe in another coup, finally resigned in 2003.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf returned from exile and successfully campaigned for president on a vision of peace and national renewal. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and First Lady Laura Bush attended Sirleaf's inauguration in 2006 as she took over leadership of one of the world's poorest nations, with 85% unemployment, a crippling national debt, and a seeming hair trigger that could plunge the nation back into bloodshed.

In August 2010, Newsweek included President Sirleaf in its list of ten global leaders who have "managed to win serious respect," dubbing her "the Rebuilder."

Since taking office, she has preserved the peace while working aggressively to restore Liberia's world image and secure forgiveness of the overwhelming international debt that would otherwise prohibit the rebuilding of the nation. Sirleaf's leadership style is reflected in the two affectionate nicknames given her by the Liberian people: "Iron Lady" and "Ma." Earlier this year, she announced that she will seek a second term in 2011.

Her 2009 memoir, This Child Will be Great and is dedicated to "all the people of Liberia who have suffered so much and now look forward to reclaiming the future."

Source: http://www.richmondforum.org/bio-ellen-johnson-sirleaf.aspx

The State of the World’s Children 2011 – Adolescence: An Age of Opportunity

Jean's story: An adolescent girl’s belief in education provides hope in Haiti

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, 25 February 2011 – When we met Jean Bernite just six weeks after the January 2010 earthquake here, she was living in a tent with four family members. She was no longer attending school but was eager to return to the classroom.

Africa's First Elected Female Leader

Journal #12: "Femocracy": Best Medicine for Africa - Gbemisola Olujobi

Abstract: This was a very hopeful story for someone like me who thinks the education for women is the most solution because - although it will take some time to realize "femocrats" and universalize it across the continent of Africa - the education changes women's thought and let them more actively face numerous problems from which women have suffered. Olujobi introduces such optimistic cases that are happening in Africa.

A recent World Bank reserach submits that numerous behavioral studies have found women to be more trust-worthy and public-spirited than men. Consistent with this hypothesis, it has been found that the greater the representation of women in parliament, the lower the level of corruption.

-> Would this be a biological difference between women and men? Or is this a temporal phenomenon only because women have not yet enjoyed obtaining political control as men have? 

The world's parliamentary body with the biggest share of women is found in Rwanda, where women hold 48.8% of the seats. 

Corruption reduces national budget resources. It also reduces the amount of public spening on health and social security, for instance, which affects women disproportionately. 

Many say it is the dawn of the new day for Africa' democracy and governance. 

"Femocracy" - democracy headed by women - nurtures, mothers, wives, sister,s daughters and granmothers like Mama Ellen Sirleaf (the current president of Republic of Liberia)

Liberia is Africa's oldest republic.  

Journal #11: Human Rights: Promoting gender equality in and through education

Abstract: Behind what is being shown regarding the gender inequality in education, Duncan clarifies what could be the causal factors for it and several terms that should be considered to approach this problem more accurately and uniformly.

Achieving gender 'equality' is equally important as promoting gender parity. Parity is a quantitative concept; equality is a qualitative one.

UN Speicial Rapporteur shows that availability, accessibility, and adaptability of education are important. 

Availability: (surprisingly) includes the single sex schools 

Acceptability: boys and girls should be treated as same, without any stereotype of women as "unsuited to academic achievement". 

Adabtability: Education should not reinforce extant societal patterns that discriminate certain groups

Sub-Saharan Africa has the largest group of countries that do not have compulsory educational legislation. (DRC is one of the 40 countries which do have no compulsory education)

Some suggestion: it is important to keep this 'gender equality' in selecting teachers. 

In all regions of the world the proportion of female teachers at secondary and higher education levels is lower than that at the primary level. This can explain for lower enrollment of girls in education, where parents refuse to allow their female children to be taught by male teachers, as Egypt has reported. 

Raise the wage of teachers.

Studeis of earnings have revealed that in some major cities around the world (Lagos, Jakarta, and Sao Paulo), bus drivers earn more than teachers. 

  

Ensure security of girls at school: Abused at school

Sexual abuse and physical violence against girls are particularly invidious dangers. 

Girl students are dropping out because of excessive bullying and terrorizing - and rape (Ohsako, 1997, p.36). 

Protect pregnant girls from being excluded in education 

In many countries pregnant girls face expulsion from formal education. Even unmarried teachers can be fired owing to pregnancy. 

Define the minimum age of marriage to protect girls 

Marriage is repeatedly asserted as one of the principal reasons for female desertion, or exclusion, from education. Egypt and Morocco report that female drop-out in rural areas can be attributed in significant degree to early marriage. 

       

Journal #10: Mass Education as a Determinant of the Timing of Fertility Decline

* The greatest impact of education is through the restructuring of family relationships and, hence, family economies and the direction of the net wealth flow. Education has its impact on fertility through five mechanisms:

1)  Reduces the child's potential for work inside and outside the home 

2) Education increases the cost of children; the school's authority is the new authority, which is not traditional. New morality from school can be gained. 

3) Schooling creates dependency both within family and within society; society regard a child as a future rather than a present producer

4) Schooling speeds up cultural change and creates new cultures 

5) School serves as a major instrument for propagatin the values of the Western middle class. 

* Portant engine of demographic change seems to be formal schooling rather than the widespread attainment of literacy 

** The first generation of mass schooling appears to be enough to initiate fertility decline. 

* The 2 major strains in developing-world education

1) Instilling moral values 

2) Importation of these values from Western culture 

* In Burma the object of education is not in doubt (p.238):

Educaiton is to serve as one of the means of social transformation from a raw material producing society where the bulk of the people had a narrow, peasant, traditional view to a diversified, somewhat industralized society able to absorb and use the most modern of scientific knowledge: It is to build a modern nation of responsible citizens.

 

Africans fear of:

- The education may destroy the moral system that alone can guarantee the older generation alrge and continuing returns

- School destroys the corporate identityof the family (submissive, limited sphere of parental influence)

* In the textbook, however, [no support for such basic African traditional institutions as polygyny, unstable marriage, the condemnation of sterile women or women who repeatedly lose children, bewitchment, and the attitude that the needs of the family have priority over those of the community] has been found. 

*** Girls' education was especially abhorred because that implied turning them into town-women, immoral and unsuited for marriage. 

* Ghana over 20 years ago, found that 1% of girls desired a traditional marriage while 86% thought polygamy definitely backward.

* High fertility may continue in spite of a major decline in nondomestic family production, as long as family morality does not decay