Doors of power shut for African Women: Thirty years after Beijing

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On paper, Africa is a continent on the move. Young populations, fast-growing cities, and a generation of women more educated than any before it. But in the chambers, where political power is exercised, progress is painfully slow. The portrait and the reality are a mismatch.

Inter-Parliamentary Union 2025 data shows that men continue to dominate political leadership across the world, and Africa remains one of the regions where the gender gap is widest. The findings land in a symbolic year: the 30^th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the landmark global agreement that promised women equal access to power.

Three decades on, that promise remains largely unfulfilled.

Globally, women hold just 27.2 percent of parliamentary seats, a marginal increase of 0.3 percent from last year. In government positions, the picture is even bleaker: women’s representation has fallen by 0.4 percentage points. Men still outnumber women by more than three to one in executive and legislative roles.

In Africa, those averages mask deeper imbalances.

While some countries have made modest gains through quotas and electoral reforms, women remain significantly underrepresented in cabinets and parliaments across much of the continent. Ministerial power, in particular, remains stubbornly male.

Globally, women head just 22.9 percent of ministries, down from 23.3 percent a year ago, and Africa is among the regions pulling that average down. The most influential portfolios, finance, defence, foreign affairs, and internal security, remain overwhelmingly controlled by men.

Women are instead clustered in “soft” ministries such as gender, family affairs, and social development. This pattern, the report notes, reflects not coincidence, but entrenched bias.

IPU President Tulia Ackson did not mince words. “The glacial pace of progress in women’s parliamentary representation, even after a year of significant elections, is alarming,” she said. “The global disparity highlights a systemic failure to advance gender equality in politics.”

For African democracies, the consequences are profound. Political leadership shapes budgets, laws, and national priorities. When women are absent from those rooms, issues that disproportionately affect them, such as healthcare access, unpaid care work, land rights, and social protection, often remain underfunded or sidelined.

Martin Chungong, the IPU’s Secretary General, stressed that responsibility does not lie with women alone. “Accelerating progress requires the active participation and support of men,” he said. “It is our collective responsibility to break down barriers.”

There are flashes of hope. Across Africa and beyond, 2024 delivered historic firsts, including the election of women presidents in Namibia and other regions. But such moments remain exceptions. As of 2025, women hold top state leadership positions in just 25 countries worldwide, and 106 countries have never had a woman leader.

UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous warned that the trend is not just slow, it is slipping backwards. “Thirty years after the Beijing Declaration, the promise of gender equality in political leadership remains unfulfilled,” she said. “Progress is not just slow—it is backsliding.”

For Africa, where women are often at the forefront of grassroots politics but absent at the top, the data poses a stark question: will the next 30 years repeat the last, or will political systems finally open their doors?

The answers, the report suggests, will depend less on rhetoric and more on action—quotas with teeth, electoral reforms that work, and political courage to dismantle systems designed to exclude women.