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Ethiopia's ruling party is imposing female quotas on candidates in a bid to have more women in parliament, officials said on Friday. Women are guaranteed up to 30 percent of seats in the national elections for the incumbent Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF).

Opposition groups have also taken up the "historic" move as political parities battle it out in the run up to the May 2005 federal and regional elections.

Ethiopia's parliament has just 42 female members, contrasting with 505 men. Education Minister Genet Zewdie is the only female member of the 16-strong cabinet.

"For the country to be a true democracy women must be properly represented, Ethiopia Beyene, the vice chairman of the parliament women's affairs standing committee, said. "The current number of women in parliament is just not good enough. Women have a major contribution to make so this is a very important step."

In the regional elections half of all candidates must be women, added Ethiopia, who has represented the EPRDF in parliament for the last nine years.

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African nations are setting the pace on female representation. Rwanda has the largest number of women parliamentarians anywhere in the world, with 49 percent of seats, whereas in the US, France and Japan women hold one in 10 seats.

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But then:

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While the move has been welcomed in Ethiopia, initiatives to try and boost the number of women in other countries' parliaments have often proved controversial. In the UK, women-only shortlists for vacant or winnable seats were ruled illegal.

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Tell us about it! Imagine the squeals from any established party in Canada if we tried to drive through this late absurdity by demanding parity.

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Originally posted by Mike Keenan:
In one form of MMP, the top-up members are drawn from the losing riding candidates. What some have proposed is this: A party's first top-up candidate is the loser that came closest to winning, the second is the loser of the opposite sex to the first that came closest, alternating until all the top-up seats have been allocated.

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It's likely that a parity rule will have to be a second round of reform, as possible aboriginal seats will also have to be a second round. There's no consensus among women's advocacy groups to go as far as the French parity law in Canada. And there's no consensus, the last I heard, among First Nations as to a separate aboriginal voters list.

But when we get there, it can be done with MMP, and we'd be the first. Just as the French were first to have a parity rule for a pure list system. (The Belgians will be the second, in their next election, but the first for their lower house. France has lists for local elections, regional elections, European elections, and their upper house, but not for their lower house.)

With MMP party lists, either open or closed, the rule could be: start with the gender of the party's local winners. Whichever gender is under represented, if the party rates a list MP, it will be the top list candidate of the under-represented gender. And so on, until each gender is equally represented, and then alternate.

If you want to use the list-free version from Baden-Wurttemberg, than the process would be just the same, except the first additional MP would be the party's best-runner-up candidate in the region of the under-represented gender.

[ 13 November 2004: Message edited by: Wilfred Day ]