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EU-Project

Women Leaders – Power of Change

Wanawake Viongozi-Nguvu ya Mabadiliko

Tanzania has signed a number of international and national policy frameworks recognizing the right of equal participation of women in the political arena. However, women are still largely underrepresented in the national parliament, on the local level and in leading positions in government and political parties. The inadequate participation is linked to a number of reasons, such as limited capacities of women to participate in the political game, existing social gender norms on women’s abilities of women to compete in politics as well as structural barriers like the lack/ non-enforcement of existing policies and strategies that address gender inequality in terms of political participation.

The project Women Leaders – Power of Change is going to address some of those challenges in order to contribute to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5, target 5 in Tanzania: Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life.

The project aims at the following three target groups:

  • 200 Female Aspirants, to be recruited and trained
  • 10 employees of the Office of Registrar of Political Parties (ORPP)
  • 75 organizations active in the field of women political empowerment

Activities thereby constitute of: 

  • Preparation and consultation activities with political parties, development of training material, training of trainers and aspirants
  • Capacity building of ORPP Monitoring Department to develop a monitoring matrix with gender sensitive indicators & training of ORPP Communication Department
  • Mapping of institutions and initiatives in the area of women political empowerment to create an online and offline database

Main objectives of the project are:

  • Strengthening the capacities of female aspirants in the area of political leadership, ethics, campaigning, networking and equal opportunities in decision making bodies
  • Enhancing the capacities of ORPP to institute, monitor and document policies and laws that increase participation and representation of women in political parties
  • Increasing the knowledge and exchange between organizations active in the field of women political participation and the Female aspirants

The project is implemented by the Hanns-Seidel Foundation in close collaboration with the Office of Registrar of Political Parties (ORPP), the Center of Good Governance and Economic Development (CGG&ED) and Women Fund Tanzania (WFT). It is co-funded by the EU and will take place from 2017 – 2019 in all regions in Tanzania.  Further information about the project can be found here.