In my country at present, women have no participation in the higher levels of government and none whatsoever in the judiciary. Even within the democratic movement only 14 out of the 485 MPs elected in 1990 were women -- all from my own party, the National League for Democracy. These 14 women represent less than 3 percent of the total number of successful candidates. They, like their male colleagues, have not been permitted to take office since the outcome of those elections has been totally ignored. Yet the very high performance of women in our educational system and in the management of commercial enterprises proves their enormous potential to contribute to the betterment of society in general. Meanwhile our women have yet to achieve those fundamental rights of free expression, association and security of life denied also to their menfolk.

Yes. We always tend to see the negative around us and rarely see the good. The number of women in Parliament has increased and at least now we can hear women voices

Breaking down biases against women parliamentarians requires concentrated efforts, adopting a moral situation strategy to engage female parliamentarians and community leaders on what community stand to gain when more women go to the parliament. Women focus in the parliament should regularly should regularly engage with political party leaders, civil society organization, as well as socio-cultural organizations for an enlighten conversations. We must go beyond the strategic approaches and begin to appeal to the sensibilities of the men as every items to push for more women representations in Nigeria through legislation have failed.

We are committed to ensuring that women's representation is achieved. Yes, there are challenges— for instance, in the executive, the representation stands at 26%, when it should be 35%. However, the situation in parliament is much better than in the executive.

It is very difficult to be a woman in politics, especially in a culture where we have a tradition of discrimination against women and girls, but I know that in our society women are respected.

We used to have 23 percent female representation in parliament but, with the stroke of a pen it went up to 48 percent. So, we managed to double our female representation with that decision,”

Now as we ask for more women to come into parliament, you need to provide a family-friendly atmosphere.

We definitely need more women in decision-making and particularly in parliaments. For example in the DRC, they have a constitution that acknowledges parity, but they need the law to effect that. And in addition to the law, they also need to make investments in women, their education, their ability to actually participate in diplomacy and therefore, in the decision-making that goes along. In addition, there are a number of investments that need to be made in line with the laws aimed at empowering women.

Parliament is very unfriendly for a woman with a child. We are talking about it and we would like to see more women with children getting into parliament and then performing their parental duties without hindrance, without neglecting the children."

The role of women is strong and we have addressed this quite often. We have a number of women in decision-making positions in the legislature, in the communities and in regions, and we have now acquired 30% representation by women

Sexism towards female MPs is sadly still commonplace

For the first time in my life, having been an ambassador for a gender-balanced 50:50 parliament, I would hesitate to encourage other women to come into politics [...] I would have to really think about what I was asking them to do, and putting people into this position when they are going to be on the front line of some pretty shitty abuse.

When I came to the Congress in 1987, there were 12 Democratic women. Now there are over 90 — and we want more.

We will not take women for women, we will take deserving women, competent women, women of good moral character. We need women capable of defending the interests of women and those of the country in the National Assembly.