Why women are not breaking the glass ceiling on open seats

In 1988, a 32-year-old lawyer running a private practice in Kampala City, ventured into elective politics. At the time, the National Resistance Movement (NRM) had shot its way to State House and was preparing the country for political reforms, chiefly, a new constitution.
That process needed a constituent assembly elected across the country to debate the country’s new direction under the euphoria of a ‘fundamental change’. Rebecca Alitwala Kadaga took to the rostrum and was sent by the people of Kamuli as its women representative to the Constituent Assembly.

The lawyer has represented the women of Kamuli since 1989. In effect, with the exception of foreign affairs minister, Sam Kutesa, who first joined Parliament in 1980, Kadaga has stayed in elective political office at a national level longer than most of her peers, including President Yoweri Museveni, who was voted as president in 1996.
Kadaga would comfortably share a diner table with Nancy Patricia Pelosi, who serves as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives and has been in elective office since 1987.
Legislators staying in office for decades is common world over. David Dingell, who died in 2019, served as a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1955 until 2015. He was one of the longest serving members of the Congress in American history, representing Michigan for more than 59 years.

Unlike Pelosi and Dingell, Kadaga’s longevity in office is a function of affirmative action. The 1995 Constitution of Uganda under article 32 (1) provides that the state shall take affirmative action in favour of marginalised groups on the basis of gender, age, disability or any other reason created by history, tradition or custom, in order to address the imbalances which exist against them.
Whereas that constitutional provision has increased the number of women in Parliament, the devil lies in the detail. The number of women elected on open seats both in local government and Parliament remains a concern. Prof Josephine Ahikire and Dr Amon A. Mwiine of Makerere University have been documenting and studying experiences of women on open seats in Parliament as well as local councils in Uganda with support from Forum for Women in Democracy (FOWODE), a non-government organisation.

According to FOWODE, the study was motivated by the persistent low numbers of women on direct seats, and the myths around these seats regarded as male spaces. It sought to establish what motivates women to contest for open seats, the challenges they encounter and the strategies to negotiate political resistance.
Women representation in Parliament increased to 139 by 2016. Following by-elections after the 2016 general elections, women constituted 34.9 per cent of Uganda’s Parliament. The Inter-Parliamentary Union Report of 2019 ranked Uganda 32nd out of 191 states, with 160 females out of 459 legislators.

Researchers note that whereas Uganda has attained, “a critical mass of women in political representation, women who contest for open seats remain marginal. There are only 20 female legislators who were directly elected to represent open seat constituencies in the 10th Parliament as of the year 2019.
At the local council level, there are only three female district chairpersons, out of the 126 districts.” The female LC5 chairpersons are from Kanungu, Kole, and Kumi districts. The 2018 Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) report shows a negligable percentage of women serving as Local Council III chairpersons or division mayors countrywide.

Exclusive club or elite capture?
According to researchers, affirmative action has in essence, produced an exclusive enclave and normalised it as a women’s space. “This kind of inequality of affirmative action as a sanctioned space for women’s political engagement and men as actors in directly elected seats is deeply embedded in the everyday political narratives and propaganda in all communities we visited across the country,” researchers say.

Notably, this narrative of men and women’s spaces for political engagement, “is rooted in the framing of affirmative action that quickly gained a local dialect label – ekifo ky’abakyala, (women’s space), which in effect presumed the open seat as ekifo ky’abasajja (men’s space).
As a parallel structure, the affirmative action policy constrained competition between women and men, normalised mainstream politics as a male space consequently marginalising women.
The pertinent question to ask is whether affirmative action has not become a victim of its own success, considering that now it has become an exclusive club for a few politicians.

It is also important to find out whether it has not entrenched patriarchal mindsets in our politics and society that limit women vying for open seats.

The search for answers leads us to an essay titled, “Identity Politics and Elite Capture” published recently in the Boston Review by Olufemi Taiwo. The scholar argues that: “Identity politics itself isn’t at fault. The trouble is that, like so many other things, identity politics is the victim of elite capture—deployed by political, social, and economic elites in the service of their own interests, rather than in the service of the vulnerable people they often claim to represent.”
The idea of elite capture has its genesis in the study of developing countries and was used to illustrate how socially advantaged people tend to gain control over financial benefits meant for everyone, especially foreign aid. The study reveals that the concept has also been applied more generally to describe how political projects can be hijacked—in principle or in effect—by the well positioned and resourced.

Prof Sylvia Tamale of the Makerere University School of Law in 1999, argued that affirmative action should be a steppingstone and a means rather than an end. She noted that affirmative action should be a voice in the wilderness towards enhancing women’s political participation.
According to researchers, the study does not negate the successes that affirmative action has registered. Far from it. The two scholars were interested in understanding why there is a scarcity of women in the open seats. That is a discussion one cannot meaningfully have without using affirmative action as a tool of analysis of the situation.

Affirmative action have opened the gateway to wider opportunities for women’s participation in political leadership; exposure, networking, building confidence and esteem, getting experience in service delivery, and framing a political agenda that speaks to women’s interests.
The ideal example is the case of the female LCV chairperson in Kanungu District, Josephine Kasya, who rose to the position after going through the furnace of local councils as a woman councillor. Prof Ahikire has previously used examples like Kasya’s to demonstrate how state feminism worked to break the glass ceiling.

Inside the blast furnace of male dominated politics
Jane Frances Atuko, the LCIII chairperson of Agule Sub-county in Pallisa District, told researchers how her opponents argued that, “A menstruating woman cannot be sent to sit on the men’s ‘chair’. What if she contaminates it during menstruation? If she wins, we should buy her a mat.”

Atuko was severally asked how a woman would head security in a Sub-county. Her opponents wondered whether she would leave her husband in bed to respond to emergencies in the night. These and other forms of demeaning propaganda were aimed at demonstrating how ‘inconceivable’ it was for women to contest against men.
Women’s direct competition with men and the prospects of joining Parliament “prompted cultural-laden narratives of women as transgressing the expected social boundaries. Women were asked whether they will remain married and committed to their husbands once they joined politics. These kinds of expectations demanded from women higher moral standards than men and threatened to confine women using the argument of the institution of marriage,” the scholars observed.

Unlike men, women are expected to prove beyond doubt, using religious, cultural, and traditional lenses that they are morally suitable for political positions. Questions arose from voters on whether a female candidate was ‘properly’ married, who their husbands are, their marital status, whether they promise to remain with their husbands once they joined politics or whether their marital status will not hinder political openness and inclusiveness. These, which can be termed as ‘politics of morality’, are often played on women’s bodies, sexuality and demonstrate the expected gender role of socialisation. Proving moral aptness in patriarchal and misogynistic cultures in some cases remained one of the biggest hurdles to women’s political aspirations.

Prof Ahikire also notes these demands infantilise women and act as subtle mechanisms of women’s control in modern democracies.
There are benefits in women using the affirmative action seat as a steppingstone, not as a destination. Ahikire says participation of more women in the direct seats debunks the myth that open seats are a territory only for men. He says: “women’s victories offer an opportunity to challenge deep rooted, unwritten, informal institutions – rules, norms and values that conceive political leadership as a masculine virtue. Through its transformative potential, women winning direct seats creates a new norm. ”

Researchers insist that open seats provide a space for women to have numbers in the political arena. Women who have won direct seats can serve as mentors and role models to other women. Ahikire shares winning open seats has been repeatedly referred to as a way of undoing restrictive political propaganda.
Each open seat won by a woman serves as a milestone to carry a transformative agenda by challenging history, religion, tradition and custom. These underlying discourses need to be challenged to promote equal participation of women in decision making.”
One wonders at what point will Uganda build a critical mass of women who will use affirmative action seats as stepping stones and not destination for life. What radical changes must happen to enable more women to shatter the glass ceiling? Should there be a cap on how many terms one can serve on the affirmative action seat to create room and opportunity for women to join politics?