Liberia's House Backs 30 Percent Gender Quota for Candidates, but Women's Groups Warn of Easy Escape Clause - FrontPageAfrica

Summary:

• Liberia’s House passed a groundbreaking new election bill that says at least 30 percent of candidates put up for election by political parties should be women.
• As the bill now moves to the Senate, women’s advocates want to remove a loophole from the bill that allows parties to claim they made “best efforts” even if they fail to meet the quota.
• Women make up nearly half of Liberia’s population, but hold only 11 percent of seats in the Legislature, and advocates say stronger laws are needed to change that.

By Joyclyn Wea, gender correspondent with New Narratives

Walk into Liberia’s Capitol Building during a legislative session, and the gender imbalance is difficult to miss. In the 73-member House of Representatives, just eight lawmakers are women. In the Senate, women occupy just two of 30 seats.

That reality is why many women’s rights advocates initially welcomed a House of Representatives vote this month to amend Liberia’s elections law to require political parties to nominate women for at least 30 percent of seats in legislative elections.

But the celebration quickly gave way to criticism. Women’s groups and female lawmakers said a clause inserted into the House version of the bill could allow political parties to bypass the quota simply by convincing election officials they made “best efforts” to recruit women candidates.

“We do not need laws that ask parties to ‘endeavor’ or ‘try’ under a different name,” said the Organization for Women and Children, a local women’s advocacy organization, in a statement. “We need a law that says: ‘No 30 percent, No Ballot.’” A similar voluntary promise was made during the 2023 elections, in which 25 political parties entered a memorandum of understanding with the National Elections Commission, committing to women making up at least 30 percent of their candidate lists. But just two smaller parties met that threshold. That experience persuaded advocates that voluntary promises are ineffective without enforceable penalties.

The House amendment has now sparked a lobbying battle in the Senate, which must now also pass the bill before it becomes law. Advocates are pushing lawmakers to close what they describe as an enforcement loophole in the bill.

Supporters of the amendment said it could help address one of the world’s widest political gender gaps. Women make up half the population but hold less than 11 percent of Legislative seats. That rate is one of the lowest in the world.

Advocates said structural barriers — including party gatekeeping, financing challenges, and male-dominated political networks — continue to limit women’s access to elected office.

Numerous studies have established that higher rates of inclusion of women in legislative roles are linked to more inclusive governance and higher economic growth. In most of the most developed economies – including in Africa – women hold closer to or above 50 percent of legislative seats. Liberia’s economic outcomes have been poor, leaving more than half the population in poverty, and the country ranking near the bottom of the United Nations Gender Inequality Index. Meanwhile, Rwanda, where women hold 61 per cent of seats in the Lower House, has consistently seen the continent’s fastest economic growth with strong engagement of women and girls in all human development categories.

Liberia’s groundbreaking former president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who in 2005 became the first woman elected to lead an African nation, lambasted Liberia’s political parties for their failure to improve women’s representation in a fiery speech in March.

In April, women from all political parties said they were tired of waiting for men to make way for women. They broke from their political parties to unite in a cross-party push to force their parties to promote more women.

The amendment to Liberia’s New Elections Law would establish a mandatory requirement that political parties include at least 30 percent women on candidate lists submitted for legislative elections.

But under Section 4.5(1)(c) of the amended bill, the National Elections Commission could still accept a party’s candidate list if the party shows “good cause” that, despite its “best efforts,” it could not meet the 30 percent threshold.

The bill leaves that determination to the sole discretion of the Commission (NEC). Advocates said that language weakens the entire reform.

“That’s not enforceable,” said Ellen Attoh-Wreh, one of the eight House representatives and chair of the Women’s Legislative Caucus of Liberia. “If parties can simply convince the NEC they tried, then the quota becomes optional.”

Members of the Caucus argued during House debates that the quota should function like other mandatory electoral requirements.

“If your list does not meet the requirement, you resubmit it,” she said. “If it still does not meet the requirement, then you do not qualify.”

Why Advocates Distrust Voluntary Compliance

Women’s groups are now demanding stricter language before the Senate passes the bill.

The organization wants lawmakers to remove the phrases “good cause,” “best efforts,” and replace them with language requiring the National Elections Commission to reject any noncompliant candidate list outright.

Under the organization’s proposal, political parties would have 48 hours to submit a corrected list or face disqualification from that election cycle.

Advocates said women’s representation is essential to ensuring that the voices and needs of half the population are represented, considered, and addressed in the body that makes rules for the land.  

“Democracy is not wholesome if it does not reflect the voice of a large demographic of people,” said Amelia Siah Siaffa, acting executive director of Sister Aid Liberia, another women-led non-governmental advocacy organization.

Siaffa said the women know they can no longer rely on men to voluntarily concede power.

“I don’t think there will ever be a society where men voluntarily give up space,” she said. “Women have to demand the space.”

A Persistent Representation Gap

The election-law amendments are part of broader electoral reform discussions linked to Liberia’s 2022 census and debates about new voting rules and proposed redrawing of electorates.

Wreh said the Women’s Legislative Caucus is opposing provisions in the bill that would reduce the polling deadline from 6 p.m. to 4 p.m. while also increasing the number of registered voters allowed at each precinct from 3,000 to 4,000.

“If you reduce the time and increase the number of voters, it creates bottlenecks,” she said, particularly in rural communities where many voters balance farming and other responsibilities on election day. They say this move could significantly reduce the number of women who vote. Women make up 80 percent of farming labor and have prime responsibility for childcare and the household.

Advocates and members of the Women’s Legislative Caucus have begun engaging Senate allies and lawmakers supportive of gender reforms. They said they are calling for the men of the Senate to focus on Liberia’s urgent development priorities and not get stuck in protecting existing male-dominated power bases that have not helped the country move forward.

This story was produced in collaboration with New Narratives as part of the Investigating Liberia project. Funding was provided by a private donor, and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency provided funding. The donors had no say in the story’s content.