Elect Her and Retain Her Campaign

To ensure that as many women MPs as possible can maintain their seats in the next general election, Oxfam with support from Irish Aid, Oxfam Ireland, Electric Aid and Oxfam US embarked on a ‘Retain Her’ campaign.

Following the election, Oxfam convened a working breakfast meeting to celebrate the 45 elected MPs and to provide a platform for Oxfam, its partners and the female parliamentarians to discuss areas of collaboration and map a way forward on support needed to strengthen their roles as MPs and collectively as the Women’s Caucus for the next five years.

One of the recommendations that emanated from the meeting was to hold a capacity development workshop for the MPs to sharpen their skills in identified areas of need, including women’s leadership, how to increase the impact of women within parliament, women leaders’ resilience, wealth creation and value-based leadership, financial literacy, working with the media, working on common agendas to further gender equality and inclusion and dialogue between women’s caucus and CSOs. Thus, in February 2020, a successful three-day workshop and retreat for the MP’s was organized and attended by 41 of the 45 female parliamentarians.

The campaigns also provided an interface between duty bearers such as the MPs and other government officials and rights holders. The interfaces created room for the MPs to inform the citizens on the laws passed in parliament and critically the provisions that the 2019/2020 budget has made and how this impacts their constituencies. Furthermore, community members raised issues on critical development initiatives which they wanted the MPs to be aware of, including water supply, rehabilitation of bridges and construction of safety shelters for sexual- and gender-based violence survivors.

Alongside the ‘Retain her’ campaign, a twin campaign on Ending Violence Against Women and Girls (EVAWG) was implemented. The female MPs used the campaigns to deliver critical messages on gender-based violence laws, girls’ education and ending violence against women and girls. Being female leaders, the community members, especially women, regarded them as change makers and challengers of negative social norms deeply rooted in the constituencies. Community members appreciated that the Parliamentarians dedicated time for sensitizing the constituencies EVAWG on gender related laws.

By providing visibility and capacity development, the campaign poses a good example of how to support sustaining and retaining women in leadership – and furthermore, how to utilize the increased number of women in leadership to create transformation; here in terms of girls’ education and EVAWG by means of role modelling and influencing, thus paving the way for even more women in leadership to come.