Twelve women now have seats in Parliament. Mauritius has succeeded in considerably increasing the percentage of women MPs in the National Assembly-from 5.5% to 17%. Although it has not managed to reach the 30% requested by the Southern African Development Community, all women involved in the fight for a better representation of women in politics have shown great satisfaction with the number of women elected.

Four women were elected on the government?s side: Sheila Bappoo, Indranee Seeburn, Nita Deerpalsing and Kalyanee Virahsawmy ? the first two have been appointed ministers On the other side, Arianne Navarre-Marie, Leela Devi Dookun-Luchoomun, Françoise Labelle, Danielle Perrier, Fazila Jeewa-Daureewaoo, Mireille Martin, Maya Hanoomanjee and Sheila Grenade have been elected and thus constitute 30% of the opposition.

All of them believe, at least, that such a number of women will certainly give another dimension to Parliament. There is hope that women will contribute to changing the behaviour of some MPs, who sometimes forget the standing an MP should have and use foul language during the debates.

Whether women have been elected because they are women has not been proved. Loga Virahsawmy firmly believes this: ?With proper lobbying and education women do get the message?. In fact there are two possibilities. This result may first be due to the fact that most of the women elected are experienced and have already shown how competent they could be. Then, a certain number of them must have been elected thanks to their belonging to a major party. The die-hards voted for their party rather than for individuals. The parties, who consciously decided to present more women candidates, should thus be congratulated for this good performance.