Sierra Leone’s Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (GEWE) Act mandates 30%
representation of women in governance—and that target has been met in Parliament and
Cabinet. This is no small feat.
But here’s the contradiction: the ruling party’s recent executive committee elections
resulted in zero women elected as district chairpersons across all 16 districts. Not one.
This stark contrast reveals a critical fault line: affirmative action is being embraced at the
national level but ignored at the party level—where political careers are born and power is
distributed long before ballots are cast.
If political parties don’t internalize the GEWE principles through their own internal
processes, they become the very gatekeepers obstructing women’s pathways to leadership.
We must ask:
Why are political parties not held to the same standards as public institutions?
What accountability mechanisms exist for party leadership structures?
If there’s no consequence for noncompliance, what prevents parties from defaulting to
exclusion?
This isn’t oversight—it’s systemic inertia.
We celebrate progress in Parliament, but we refuse to overlook regression at party level. Let’s
not mistake selective compliance for transformative change.
Accountability must begin where leadership begins: inside political parties.
Let’s push for a recalibration—from quotas in policy to equity in practice. #GEWEinAction