African Woman and Child Feature Service

The limited involvement of women in politics has often been linked to the patriarchal nature of most African societies.

Women are part of these patriarchal societies and sometimes act as agents in perpetrating patriarchy. This is true particularly where tradition and culture have a central place in the lives of community members. Therefore, to effect any change, there is need to engage players at the grassroots and make them change agents.

This is the approach Cameroonian organisation Interfaith Vision’s Foundation (IVF) is taking under the leadership of Anne Stella Fomunbod. The organisation is working to empower women at the grassroots in a wholesome manner to enable them participate effectively in the political arena. This includes empowering them financially through microcredit initiatives as well as training on food processing and preservation in the fight against poverty.

Women have been blocked out of political involvement due to lack of resources. According to Fomunbod grassroots women in Cameroon have been unable to participate in politics because they lack finances that would even in the first instance enable them to register as members of political parties.

Fomunbod believes that women’s empowerment has failed because previously all activities aimed at changing the political landscape to include them were implemented from the top to the bottom. “Government intervention is only limited to urban areas and elite populations,” she argues.

It is, however, at the bottom of the pyramid that women face challenges in accessing positions of leadership because of cultural barriers are entrenched in the societal psyche.

Harmful practises like female genital mutilation, polygamy as well as wife battering and inheritance form cultural barriers for women.

To address these problems that affect women at the grassroots, IVF works mainly with widows who have suffered human rights abuses as an entry point to engage community leaders in an effort to bring change to women.

The organisation brings men and women together to discuss human rights abuses and women’s right to political participation through focus group discussions that address root causes of the problems. These discussions have enabled religious and traditional leaders listen to the women and take their concerns into consideration.

The organisation has also conducted baseline studies to understand women’s issues within the community.

The unwritten customary laws coupled with hereditary structures of local governance in Cameroon pose a major challenge as these have been used to exclude women in politics.

The IVF has worked with traditional leaders in 53 villages to have the laws codified.

To ensure that they do not support formalising laws that are harmful to women, Fomunbod says they use the national constitution and international laws as reference points to guard against this.

She adds: “We also use the baseline survey findings and prescriptions given by the community members during their group discussions or debates.”

Even though the organisation uses a training manual that simplifies CEDAW in their engagement with the traditional leaders, this has had its challenges.

She says: “It takes patience to interpret them with the semi or illiterate community members.”

However, they are reaping benefits from their work. Women are now able to cite traditional laws and produce documents indicating that their rights have been violated contrary to what the written customary laws say.

Fomunbod was speaking in Washington DC where she is on a Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellowship at the National Endowment for Democracy to American and African in the city.

Prior to the advocacy work that IVF has done, women had less than two percent representation in the traditional councils that govern villages and these were elderly women who were mainly consulted on customs.

“Today, this number has grown to 13 per cent and it includes young dynamic women,” says Fomunbod, who feels that this is not enough.

She recommends affirmative action as part of the government policy to bridge the gap between women and men in politics. She reiterates: “Women must be given quotas as a remedial measure but this must be for a specific period,” observes Fomunbod. While calling for more funding for grassroots initiatives, she reiterates: “Invest more here and let us balance the equation.”