"Women leaders are better than men because they go to the field more and because they are mothers, they know what the communities need. Men only like to drink beer." James N A Mukupa, Headman of Mungu village, Kafue, Zambia

"We want women at the top but should not genetically engineer themÉ...we want women with footprintsÉ people who have history." Cecilia Ogwal, MP, Uganda

African women are motivated

Just Big Cars and Leaking Roofs?, the name of the British Council work-shadowing program with women MPs which grew out of the survey results, reflects one of the key findings. Many people in East and Central Africa said that MPs in their country are only interested in big cars and salaries and they rarely visit their constituencies. MPs, on the other hand, said often they don't visit their constituencies because they are bombarded by requests for money to repair leaking school roofs, for example. On neither side is there a realistic understanding of what a political leader can do to represent their constituents effectively, especially women and the disadvantaged.

So what can MPs do for their constituents apart from handing out money to people to help meet some of their immediate needs? We paired up fourteen women MPs from the UK with fourteen from the seven countries of East and Central Africa (Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi and Zambia) so they could learn from each other how MPs can represent their constituents' needs. They do this through shadowing each other at work in their constituencies. The African women MPs have been to the UK to visit Parliament and shadow their partner MP in her constituency. The program is based on mutual learning - in the UK the question of whether the increase in numbers of women MPs following the election of the Labour government will result in better policies and programs for women in the UK is still a live issue.

Through their work-shadowing visits, African MPs have gained insights into how political activity is conducted in the UK. For example, Cecily Mbarire, a Kenyan MP representing women and youth interests, was shocked at how Prime Minster's question time is conducted in the UK Parliament: "I couldn't imagine that the Tony Blair I hear about when I'm in Kenya, you know, leading a super-power, can actually undergo such shouting ... people telling him 'shut up.' People are so bold in asking him questions."

Ruth Msafiri, MP for Muleba in Northern Tanzania, realized how much the UK system encourages women to stand in their own right as political leaders. She was impressed by a program in the UK designed to look for women capable of leadership and to encourage them to participate in public life. In Tanzania by con-