DRC: Women candidates needed

Women make up just 12 per cent of the roughly 18,000 candidates who will stand for election to parliament in the Democratic Republic of Congo's 28 November elections. According to the Permanent Framework for Dialogue for Congolese Women, a gender equality pressure group, only 42, or 8.4 per cent, of the 500 members of the current National Assembly – the lower house of parliament – are women.