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SOUTH SUDAN: Growing Women's Power in Government

Skye Wheeler

JUBA, Sep 30 2008 (IPS) - When Sabrina Dario Lokolong, the Speaker of South Sudan's Eastern Equatoria State Assembly, enters or leaves Parliament, all the other members of parliament must stand up.

"People, especially men, really don't like this," Lokolong said. She is 40 – young in South Sudan's political scene – unmarried and without children; all factors that add to her difficulties as a female figure of authority.

It would be a tough job for anyone: the south is barely out of decades of conflict, physical and administrative structures are weak where they exist, money is short and deep ethnic divisions remain.

But like other women in Africa's newest government, she also faces obstacles men do not.

Southern politicians are frequently accused – usually with few consequences – of corruption and nepotism. Women leaders also have to contend with even juicier, sexual rumors that spread faster and are often entirely untrue. And while wrongly distributed cash or jobs can at least be understood as beneficial to the individual's relatives, accusations against women tend to hurt their relationships with their family.

Anne Ito, secretary general of the governing Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) in the southern sector, said she had been labeled as a prostitute by the press, causing her relations distress.

"They say things like you only got the job from having relationships with men," Lokolong echoed. It is hard to control lawmakers, to push for change with these rumors encircling you, she added grimly. "Change is slow."

But southern men and women know the commitment has been made to get women into leadership in the south. There is no going back.

A peace deal in 2005 ended the two-decade-long north-south war, allowing the South its own semi-autonomous government headed by the SPLM, the political wing of the main southern rebel group.

The southern constitution, passed in 2006, called for women to get 25 percent of jobs in the new judiciary, executive and parliament.

Ito said the much-cited 25 percent has a long history as a tool of inclusiveness for the rebel movement.

It was agreed in 2004, at the first SPLM convention, in recognition of the role women had played in the southern rebellion. Women fought as soldiers, farmed the land to feed the rebels, raised the young sons who were quickly engulfed into the army and drummed up cash in the Diaspora for the rebels.

"There was no way in which women did not serve," Ito said, adding that the SPLM also had to recognize the after the bloody conflict that killed millions of largely male southerners, most of the adult population is female.

In the war, Ito explained, women were also left alone to deal with the homesteads and internal and inter-tribal conflicts. Once they found themselves in these positions of authority, there was no way they would return to the dutiful shadows.

There have always been strong women in Southern societies, Ito said, but the push now is to make high-profile women the rule, not exceptions allowed by their families.

The 25 percent target was greeted with jubilation by women and is much talked about at rallies and in speeches by southern leaders who have managed to –- or are making steps towards -– filling the quota. In some ways it is an easier promise to fulfill than improving the wrecked health and education sectors.

But critics say the 25 percent has become a bar: male leaders think once they achieve this, there is nothing else to be done for the cause of gender equality.

Very few institutions have managed to achieve 25 percent representation of women, although a handful are close. Proportions across the board are far better than before, when women made up perhaps one percent of the Khartoum-controlled government. Still, women tend to be in less powerful positions.

A lack of qualified women is often given as the reason and Ito said this is not just an excuse but a real barrier. "Historically girls have not been sent to school and their literacy rate is extremely low," she said.

Figures back her up: the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said in 2005 that a Southern girl child is more likely to die in child birth than complete her primary education.

And while women did fight in the bush war, most senior commanders were men and a strong sense of entitlement to government positions often meant top jobs have fallen to them: gender equality still has less resonance than war-time loyalty.

The south's civil service is huge, containing both Khartoum's former employees and the thousands who served in rebel-held areas as administrators. Hiring more people, including women who have returned to the South with skills, has been discouraged and badly-deficient labor laws mean firing is difficult.

A bill has been written by the Ministry of Social Welfare, Religion and Gender that will make the 25 percent a law, Ito said, adding that this should put fire back into the positive discrimination instrument.

"When the parliament passes it, it will be an obligation to fulfill it," she said.

The quota has played an important role at the grassroots level. Business woman Eunice Elisama Warija told IPS the quota is often discussed in rural areas. "The few women that are there can speak for all of us," she said, "there's not much but at least they are in."

Without formal elections, village community leaders have tended to sit together and chose a representative through consensus, working carefully through the character and experience of each possibility. While a female representative might not be the most natural choice, the 25 percent has made it a possibility. "A community will choose a good woman, if a woman is requested," Warija said.

In national elections set for next year, a quarter of seats will have to be filled by women: following the precedent started by the SPLM. "Now there is 25 percent in the electoral law and even the most fundamentalist and conservative political parties talk about it," Ito said. It has been an important success for the SPLM who have always claimed to want political change across Sudan, not just in the South.

But Warija – like others – believes that the women leaders, like their male counterparts, need to do more to reconnect with the grassroots. Women selected for positions of power tend to be those who left during the war and picked up skills and ideas elsewhere.

Many raised their profile by working the ladders of the large network of NGOs during the later years of the war, civil servant Gladys Juma* said. While many of the NGOs were Southern Sudanese they were safely based out of Nairobi with the rest of the donor and NGO community.

Most, Warija said, still do not spend enough time back in the rural areas.

Like other women in government, the top handful arrived at their positions in a variety of ways, including an important proportion through being married to top rebel commanders. But all were passionately dedicated to the rebel movement, making enormous sacrifices.

"They're all tough and very scary," Juma said about the five or six top ladies. While enormously respected – as mothers and grandmothers they also have a special "layer of power, influence and status" – there's not a huge amount of sisterhood to be seen.

And sisterhood is badly needed. Not only between rural women but between high-profile women and others in more lowly positions in government who may experience less spiteful sexual gossip and lies, but instead face endless sexual harassment.

"Everyone's dealing with it in their own way, there's not much talk about it," Juma said. A few men in power are truly abusive but even the more enlightened sometimes demand a good flirt. "They need to know they're a man and in charge. It's a symbolic exchange."

*Not her real name – this high-ranking civil servant feared retribution if her real name was used.