Leadership for women’s health in Africa: the parliamentarians for women’s health project

Overview

This article describes the achievements, challenges, and lessons emerging from the Parliamentarians for Women’s Health (PWH) project. This ground-breaking pilot project has been implemented in Southern and East Africa. It attempted to support a different expression, or redefinition, of leadership – at the level of both parliamentarians and community members. It did this through facilitating dialogue and the exchange of information, views and analysis between MPs, civil-society organisations, HIV-positive women’s networks, and community members. The article examines changes in attitude among individuals, mutual learning, policy processes and action generated at this ‘power interface’, and engenders a discourse on supporting leadership at disparate levels, emphasising the values of participation, GIPA and experiential learning.

This article is hosted by our co-publisher Taylor & Francis. For the full table of contents for this and previous issues of this journal, please visit the Gender and Development website.