A Gender Advocate, Emilia Kamara-Jengo, also Co-founder and Programs Coordinator for the Women’s Forum for Human Rights and Democracy, has challenged women to take advantage of the Gender Equality for Women’s Empowerment Act 2022, signed by His Excellency President Dr. Julius Maada Bio a few days ago to open the space for 30% inclusion of women into governance and civil services.
Emilia said: “I want to discourage that aspect of people saying, we don’t have the women, where are they, we have a lot of women graduating from universities across the country, I want to tell the women that, we can now break the barrier and we should no longer allow those perceptions to stop us from going to what we deserve, it’s our human rights and so we need to go out for it.”
She said for the past years, she has trained and coached up to fifty women in Bombali, who are aspiring for political positions, adding: “we are encouraging and asking political parties to ensure that they give some of these women symbols and even apart of the symbols, even the current lower-level elections. It starts from the fact that women should be in the mainstream and decision-making process. It is not about just having women’s wing because at the end of the day those executive members are the one who seats to take decisions,” she challenged
Emilia Kamara-Jengo concluded by calling on the civil service commission to create the space for more women recruitment at higher positions. “Currently if you take the statistics, we have a limited number of women who are permanent secretaries most of them are deputies, so we are calling on the civil service commission to ensure that they start it they would not be able to have those experiences if we do not employ them,” she appealed.
