Women should be encouraged to develop their income-generating capacities to support their political careers. Women and their political parties should be educated about the opportunities presented by the proportional seats e.g. securing seats for the most capable women members of their parties. At the same time, the strongest women should be supported to run for the open seats (FPTP) to improve the chances of women's election in both open and reserved seats. Women in political parties should educate themselves and understand the consequences, advantages and disadvantages of contesting in the FPTP and proportional representation seats. They should engage their parties about these choices and deploy their energies strategically in elections so that they maximise their chances of success. The women in politics need to organise and improve their visibility and audibility to the electorate by articulating issues that resonate with women, the poor and marginalised sections of the populace. That will render it difficult for their political parties and the electorate to ignore them. Articulating a women's agenda around which the majority of women can be rallied is a good starting point. Social media, market places and other spaces dominated by both men and women could be deployed to this end. Once they have built a strong women's constituency, they improve their visibility and acceptability to voters, particularly women. State and non-state actors need to conduct robust civic education to sensitise the populace about the importance of effective representation and its impact on service delivery, problem solving and the well-being of the electorate. Rural constituencies and voters in particular, need fair and unbiased civic education to expand their participation in political and electoral processes that impact their individual and collective development. [ 4 [

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