African and Canadian female politicians have many things in common, as they discuss social media and gender-equality topics during The International Women’s Day event

African women involved in politics and their Canadian counterparts have gathered in the Quebec National Assembly with the occasion of the International Women’s Day.

Female parliamentarians from Ottawa, Quebec, Niger and Burkina Faso have exchanged ideas, experiences and common views of their political missions.

Suzie Barbosa of the National People’s Assembly in Guinea-Bissau declared: “One of the reasons I went into politics in my country is really is because I realized that women don’t have a voice. We had the idea of Canada being such a developed country that women in politics didn’t have any barriers. What we realized in the end – all women have barriers in politics.”

On the other hand, Quebec Liberal MNA Maryse Gaudreault also underlined the differences between the Canadian and African representatives, as equality and sexism are commonly known to take toll over African political environment. Not that North America didn’t has its topic-related struggles.

Nevertheless, the discussions were considered to be a huge step ahead in the battle for giving a voice to women in a sector clearly dominated by men. For now, in Canada at least, female representatives hold 36 seats out of a total of 125 positions of Quebec’s National Assembly, while accounting for 25 per cent of the House of Commons in Ottawa.