Among the 35,000 plus women gathered in Beijing and Huairou in September 1995, ten were from The Feminist Majority. Here are on-site accounts that Feminist Majority Delegation members posted on The Feminist Majority Foundation Online throughout the conference. She identified the main obstacles to women s political participation as being mainly cultural, educational and financial.
Ugandan society is traditional and stigmatizes women politicians.
In addition, few women possess the financial resources to run political campaigns and Ugandan society chastises women who engage in fundraising for any purpose, including for financing political campaigns. Bakojja credits affirmative action for the few women officeholders in Uganda. She also praises an informal system of women' s counsels that extends from village level government to parliament as being instrumental in facilitating communication between women politicians and ordinary Ugandan women. Virginia Pinto, a representative from the National Association of Nongovernmental Organizations in Zimbabwe and the first woman to run for City Council in her town since Zimbabwe's independence in 1980, echoed Bakojja's concern regarding the small number of women in elected office. Pinto is running as an independent candidate because none of Zimbabwe's political parties had an agenda she could support as a feminist.