Nigeria’s parliament is considering a law to boost female representation in its legislature, currently the lowest in Africa.
The deputy speaker proposed a bill that would amend the constitution to require 183 women to sit in the national and state assemblies; currently, just four of Nigeria’s 109 senators and 16 members of its 360-seat lower house are female.
Africa as a whole has not seen many women hold senior political positions. Since the appointment of Elisabeth Domitien as the prime minister of the Central African Republic in 1975, there have been just 12 female heads of state and 19 female heads of government on the continent, out of several hundred in each role.
