LOS ANGELES TIMES     Wednesday, February 23, 2000

Gender Quota Puts Uganda in Role of Rights Pioneer
Society: Guaranteed seats in government have enabled women in nation and worldwide to empower themselves.

By ANN M. SIMMONS, ROBIN WRIGHT, Times Staff Writers

     KAMPALA, Uganda--The customs still practiced in this lush East African nation are strikingly archaic: Women expected to kneel when serving food to their husbands. Mothers forbidden permanent custody of children after a divorce. Men "inheriting" widows of their deceased brothers. Legal polygamy.
     Yet Uganda has become a key testing ground for a radical political experiment. All elected bodies, from village councils to the national parliament, must have a minimum number of women.
     In a word, quotas.
     The requirement has helped transform a country ranked as one of the world's most wayward states during the brutal rule of President Idi Amin in the 1970s into a pioneer for women's rights in the 2000s. Almost 20% of Uganda's parliament is female--nearly 1 1/2 times the percentage in the U.S. Congress. Seven Cabinet members are women. A third of local council seats must, by law, go to women.
     The difference involves more than just a proliferation of female names and faces. With gutsy energy, Uganda's female politicos are tackling centuries-old traditions--and recasting their futures.
     "Women are now the main instruments of modernization in Uganda. We're also leading the way for women in Africa," said Beatrice Kiraso, who was elected to parliament in 1996. "It's hard to believe we've come so far."
     The firstborn of 10 children in a traditional village family, Kariaso grew up during the reign of Amin, a polygamist reputed to be brutal toward women. Today, the 38-year-old economist is chairwoman of parliament's Finance Committee and considered one of Uganda's most effective politicians.
     "We're creating a whole new cycle," she said. "Quotas helped women gain confidence in themselves, and society in turn has gained confidence in women, opening up even more avenues. The way things are moving, I think my 11-year-old daughter could someday run for president--and win."
     Although generally not viewed as a permanent prop for women, quotas have become politically chic in many parts of the world. Thirty-two of the world's more than 190 countries have some kind of female quota for local or national assemblies, according to the U.N. Development Fund for Women, or UNIFEM.
     The types of quotas vary. In some countries, seats are reserved for women, from 10% to 30%. In others, political parties mandate that 20% to 40% of their candidates for elected assembly must be female.
     The 1995 U.N. Conference on Women in Beijing gave a de facto endorsement of quotas as a way to redistribute power, triggering wide adaptation in the developing world.
     "It's critical today to create a mass of female leaders, and quotas are the fastest way to ensure that the process is at least started," said Noeleen Heyzer, executive director of UNIFEM.
     Not surprisingly, gender quotas spark debate as passionate as that triggered in the United States over the issue of racial quotas. Male opponents say such measures discriminate against them. Female critics argue that quotas impose limits on the advancement of women: By mandating minimum levels of representation, they say, quotas create a psychological ceiling, making it difficult for women to reach the majority status in government that they have in most electorates.
     Still, even the critics acknowledge that, because of quotas, millions of women worldwide have been elected over the past decade--more so than in any comparable period in history.
     India has undergone the biggest change. In 1993, a constitutional amendment set aside a third of all seats in village councils for women. Almost a million women from all classes suddenly came to power in the world's most populous democracy.
     Why are quotas taking off now? Reasons differ. In Africa, a continent known for its patriarchal societies, women have fared better in countries where they played pivotal roles in campaigns against colonialism, white minority rule or authoritarian regimes.
     Uganda's quotas, for example, grew out of the National Resistance Army's guerrilla war in the 1980s, when women fought alongside men. In recognition of their role, each of the rebel councils set up in liberated zones included a secretary for women's affairs. After the NRA victory, the new president, Yoweri Museveni, applied the bush measure to national politics.
     "There was always a distortion," Museveni explained in a recent interview. "Women were left out, yet they're the producers of wealth in the countryside. So it was a must that we empower 51% of our people."
     In South Africa, both houses of Parliament are about one-third female, in large part because women were prominent in fighting apartheid. The speaker of Parliament is a woman. The new constitution bars discrimination on the basis of gender, marital status or pregnancy. (South Africa has the eighth-highest percentage of women in parliament; the United States is tied with Jamaica and St. Kitts and Nevis for 42nd place.)
     India already had a half-century tradition of quotas for indigenous tribes, outcastes and Indians of British descent in state and national parliaments. The idea of extending it to include women was suggested in the 1980s by former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, son of Indira Gandhi, India's only female leader. In 1993, Parliament passed a constitutional amendment adding women to local councils, although it has since balked at applying the one-third formula to higher offices, including seats in Parliament.
     In Uganda, quotas were introduced at the party level in 1989, and the country's first quota election was in 1996. Since then, the new female bloc in parliament has lobbied for more. The result has been a new National Gender Policy, an aggressive strategy of "positive discrimination" that now goes all the way to the top.
     Wandira Specioza Kazibwe has reaped the benefits of Uganda's about-face. The only girl among nine children, she walked barefoot to a village school in the 1960s, even though her father was a polygamist who initially didn't believe that girls should be educated.
     Today, Kazibwe is Uganda's vice president--and Africa's highest-ranking female politician.
     "This law gives us the basis to argue against anything contrary to empowering women," said Kazibwe, who was appointed vice president in 1994.
     Uganda's new women activists have chalked up other successes. In 1998, they amended a land act to allow married women to share property ownership with their husbands. Men must get permission from a spouse to sell land on which they have a home. A widow who remarries is now protected by law from having her home and land seized by her late husband's family--though in practice this is still very common.
     Women also spearheaded a campaign against poverty in Uganda, one of the world's 10 poorest countries. About 80% of adults are farmers, the vast majority of them women, and 64% of women are illiterate. By increasing women's access to education and technology, the campaign seeks to eliminate mass poverty by 2017.
     Uganda's president argues that women have irrevocably changed local politics.
     "Women have stabilized politics in a way because they tend not to be so opportunistic," Museveni said. "They tend to go after the interests of stability. They're not so reckless like the men."
     "Positive discrimination" is now felt throughout Ugandan society. Guaranteed primary education for four children in each household, at least two of whom must be female, has boosted the enrollment of girls since the program began in 1997. Girls who pass high school exams are automatically awarded extra points to ensure that they enter university. Girls' high schools have begun to outperform boys' schools in national examinations.
     Yet the very idea of gender equality remains volatile in countries with strong traditional cultures. Despite constitutional guarantees of female equality, Zimbabwe's Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling last year declaring that it is in "the nature of African society that women are not equal to men. Women should never be considered adults within the family, but only as a junior male or teenager." In Kenya, 10 supporters of a female candidate for parliament in 1992 were raped by men who opposed her, to send a message.
     Uganda has a long way to go too. Men still pay a "bride price" for a woman, as if she were a piece of property. A man can still divorce his wife for adultery alone, but she can't divorce him on the same grounds. Male politicians are trying to lower the age of marital consent for a female, from 18 to 14.
     African society is also still adjusting to the idea of women in power. At functions she has attended with the president, Vice President Kazibwe has often been mistakenly introduced as his wife. On trips abroad, protocol officers have walked right by her.
     The impact of quotas is not always immediate. Quotas that political parties impose on themselves don't necessarily mean that the women win.
     And even staunch supporters of quotas tend to agree that they shouldn't be permanent.
     "Quotas can't be a long-term solution," said Christine Pintat, assistant secretary-general of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Geneva. "They're only a temporary measure to compensate for a long-standing imbalance."    

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     Women in Government
     There are slightly fewer women than men in the world: 98.6 women for every 100 men. And women make up 46.7% of the official labor force worldwide. But women constitute only 13% of lawmakers in the legislatures of the world's more than 190 countries. In 1995, Sweden's Cabinet became the first in the world to have equal numbers of men and women. Worldwide, the percentage of female Cabinet ministers in 1996 was 6.8. At the United Nations, of the 185 highest-ranking diplomats, seven are women. Women hold 35.5% of professional posts in the U.N. Secretariat, including 18.5% in senior management. Their representation in national parliaments, as of November 1999:

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     Countries With Quotas
     Of the 32 countries that have some form of female quotas in politics, six reserve a set number of seats for women in parliament:
                Argentina
                Belgium
                Brazil
                Nepal
                North Korea
                Philippines

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     Source: United Nations, Inter-Parliamentary Union

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     Times Nairobi Bureau Chief Simmons reported from Kampala and Wright from Washington.