A total of 18 Malian women candidates are still nursing ambitions of becoming elected members of the country's parliament, after the first round of legislative elections whose final results were proclaimed by the constitutional court over the weekend in Bamako, according to news reaching here Tuesday from the Malian capital.
From the initial 157 candidates, only about a tenth of eligible women candidates will take part in the second round of the legislative elections to be held next Sunday in Mali which, observers say, is a great disappointment for the 139 women aspirants eliminated from the electoral race, according to Pan- African News Agency (PANA).
Even if the 18 women candidates were to be elected during the second round, women parliamentarians would only represent a mere 12 percent out of the total number of 147 members of the next national assembly, PANA says.
Given the commitment shown by Malian women throughout the electoral campaigns, and the massive support they received from gender associations and development partners, expectations were high that there would be a very significant improvement in their rate of representation.
The outgoing Malian national assembly has 147 parliamentarians, with 14 women members, for a feminine representativeness rate of less than 10 percent.
Officially, women constitute 51 percent of Malian population estimated at nearly 13 million.
Source: Xinhua
|
Comment
Tell A Friend
Print Format
Save Article