Professor Gabriel Adamson King is a senior academic and management professional specializing in Business Management, Human Resource Management, Public Administration, Governance, Elections Management, Sustainable Development, and International Consultancy. He has served as Professor/Associate Professor of Business Management at Teofilo Kisanji University since 2014 and has held leadership and advisory roles with the United Nations, Commonwealth, and SADC. His international experience includes serving as a United Nations Electoral Adviser in Timor-Leste and Commonwealth Regional Coordinator for Africa. He holds doctoral degrees in Business Management and Public Administration, as well as postgraduate qualifications in management, finance, banking, and sustainable development. He has authored 10 books and 185 articles and has extensive experience in research, training, consultancy, policy, organizational development, and strategic management.

  The Relevance of Women Participation in Politics: A Focus on  Women Special Seats of Parliament in Regard to Competence Based Recruitment, Appointment and Promotion (RAP)

Abstract

No doubt women and men are the key to enriching development of the world. Women particularly are the key in offspring bearing, and taking care of us, until we are now known as professors, doctors, engineers, lawyers, managers, and so forth. We equally look at the phenomena of women special seats of parliament as the barrier to developing women who are potentially equal to men in their ability to work and produce. It is through this agony, we came up with modality to ensure that women recruitment to any post must be to attain development and for this to be done we must have competence-based recruitment, appointment and promotion (RAP). This research was qualitative design. And we obtained sample through purposeful sampling method, where we earmarked on civil servants and business women in three countries of East Africa namely Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya. Data were collected through interviews, and questionnaires. We interviewed 860 women of East Africa to come to the conclusion. We interviewed 194; 340; and 326 from Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya respectively. We used interview, questionnaire, and documentation as a data collect of strategy. The main objective of the study was to look at the relevance of women special seats of the parliament in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda in boosting women participation in decision making. The findings of the study reveal that 88% of women are not comfortable with special seats of parliament, and 12% were in favour of the seats, and they propose the following. Women special seats of parliament should be removed because they do not replicate competencies that women have, and where special seats are available then it should be for one term only of parliament, and any woman who is interested should contest in constituency. This will foster women participation in politics and will also improve marital relationships of Africa.

We hereby conclude that irrespective of the system which each country adopt, selection of women contestants in women special seats of parliament must observe the competence mode of recruitment, appointment and promotion so that each government must reap the fruits of each member who is elected. If we observe that competence mode of recruitment, appointment, and promotion, development of our countries will be obvious.

Keywords: Appointment; Development; Promotion; Recruitment; Special Seats; Women.