National conference for top female leaders in Cameroon: Building a caucus of Cameroonian women’s civic rights advocates .

Today was the culmination of a weeklong program focused on women’s involvement in politics.The U.S Embassy Yaoundé in partnership with the Ministry of Women’s Empowerment and Family Affairs (MINPROFF) and IVF-Cam hosted a conference to energize Cameroon’s Women’s Caucus.

 The event sought to boost networks led by Cameroon’s female elected officials, notably: 21 Senators, 56 Deputies in the National Assembly, 29 Mayors, along with female Ministers and women’s civil society organizations.We attended as CSO , and leaders of an association of women professional from the 3 Northern regions of Cameroon.

In Cameroon, women makes almost 52% of the population, but women are not proportionally represented in quantity and quality in elected offices. Some issues raised that might contribute to this situation were discussed and included:

• Low access to birth certificates that leads to inability to vote, with as consequence a low participation of women to electoral process;
• Low of access to family planning that keep women at home caring for their many kids;
• Nasty women behavior towards other women;
• “Divide to conquer” A strategy used by men to weaken women’s groups;

Questions raised included
• what are the best strategies for gender regime change ?
• How do we promote women?
• How to maximize informal gathering of women like the jangui? Women are already involved in informal movement, how do we involve in them in the formal, institutional political process?

• “If you want something ask a man, if you want something done, ask a woman”