– For a long time we have not been fair to you, said the president Julius Maada Bio from the lectern in parliament to the many women’s campaigners and feminists who had come forward. On behalf of all men in our country, I want to apologize, he continued in his speech before signing The Gender Equality and Women’s Empowering Act in January. For decades, women have fought for rights in Sierra Leone. The country that twenty years ago ended an equally long civil war has some sad records. There is the country where there is the greatest risk of losing one’s life during pregnancy, they are in 10th place for teenage births and have major challenges with violence against women. But the women’s movement has created movement in parliament and over the past 15 years, women’s rights have gradually improved. Now it has culminated in an equality law that will strengthen women in positions of power and their place on the labor market. Progressive equality law The new law must work on several parameters. From now on, a third of the country’s elected politicians will be women, where today it is only 12.3 per cent. This also applies to the public offices that are appointed politically. But gender quotas are not only in the public sector, says Nicky Spencer-Coker on a connection from the capital Freetown in Sierra Leone to Danish Verdens Beste Nyheder. She is a lawyer and works at the women’s organization Purposeful to influence politicians to strengthen women’s rights. – If a private business has more than 25 employees, women must now make up 30 per cent of the employees, and this also applies to the leading positions in the business, she says. The law also ensures equal pay for equal work, it increases maternity leave from 12 to 14 weeks and it strengthens women’s economic independence. – Now women can go in and make their own financial transactions, without anyone having to vouch for them, says Nicky Spencer-Coker. Failure to comply with the law is punishable by fines of up to NOK 26,400 and up to five years in prison. On the shoulders of decades of women’s struggle But the new law is not something that has fallen from the sky as Nicky Spencer-Coker describes it. – It is something that the women’s rights movement in Sierra Leone has been working on for decades, she says. The law comes in a number of other laws that empower women. Nicky Spencer-Coker returned to Sierra Leone from the United States in 2005. Since then, a minimum age of 18 for marriage, a ban on violence against women and marital abuse has been adopted. Women have been given inheritance rights and pregnant girls can continue their schooling, where pregnancy previously barred them from finishing school. The latest progress has led to women also being given the right to own land which has otherwise only been reserved for men. – We have come a long way, but this is still only the beginning, says Nicky Spencer-Coker.
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Big victory for the women’s struggle in Sierra Leone: Very ambitious equality law in a country characterized by intimate partner violence
