WOMEN IN POLITICS
It is hard to find a national constitution which does not guarantee equal rights for all its citizens regardless of ethnicity, sex, gender, colour, religious beliefs, political leanings, social and economic status etc. Well, they would wouldn’t they? This is what constitutions do after all. But the reality may be very different with respect to any of the disparities listed above. It is gender that concerns us here.
Historically countries have been quicker to grant equal civil and political rights than full social and economic rights to women. Particularly tricky to negotiate have been those rights pertaining to domestic and family relations as we saw from our discussion on the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). In a number of countries in the Middle East for example women have the right to vote …often this comes in the Independence- from-colonialism package….. but have been or are still are denied other freedoms such as the right to have a passport without a husband’s or father’s consent, the right to pass their nationality to their children, even as famously in Saudi Arabia the right to drive a car. Of course Saudi women do not have the right to vote either so no pressing need then to get out.
Naturally if women are in some way ‘disempowered’ in their private lives…such as being regarded as legal minors whatever their age….. they are unlikely to be making much of a splash on the public stage. In some electoral systems women can exercise their voting rights only as part of the family vote.
Voting rights and the right to stand for election for parliament are usually granted at the same time, though there is often a hiatus between granting women the right to stand for Parliament and their actually achieving it. Women often have a hard time getting on the lists of candidates of political parties, and as debutantes in to the political process often have difficulty in obtaining votes both from men and from other women.
The website of the Inter Parliamentary Union (www. ipu.org) has amongst other things an interesting breakdown of women/men parliamentarians world- wide with the Arab states currently demonstrating the most inequality and the Nordic countries taking first prize for female representation.
It is generally assumed that having just a very few members of a minority group represented in any larger group will not make a difference and will not give them a voice.
Somewhere around 30% is normally regarded as the minimum for achieving a ‘critical mass’. There are various means of increasing the numbers of women in Parliament and one of these is by establishing quotas of, for example a certain number of seats in Parliament being reserved for women, or insisting that women’s names are fully represented on and throughout party lists and not just as after- thoughts at the bottom.
Often people (men) will tell you that establishing quotas is ‘against human rights’ (Not so. It is enshrined in the UN/CEDAW at Article 4), or that it does women a disservice by patronizing them. It is also said that women who achieve their places through the quota system are those who cannot get there on merit and are therefore not fit for high office.
And it is certainly true that incapable men can achieve high office without resorting to quotas.
Having a large number of women in Parliament…or even a woman Prime Minister…. does not automatically translate into good times for women overall. It could be argued that one of the easiest and most visible ‘wins’ for a new Prime Minister or President lies in the prompt appointment of large numbers of capable women. Who can forget the pictures in 1997 of the fresh young Tony Blair with his Blair’s Babes? But women in Britain still hold only 12% of top corporate jobs, spend twice as much time on domestic work and do not get equal pay for equivalent work.
The achievement of Rwanda is often cited in having 56% of seats in the Lower House occupied by women, and 34.6% of seats in the Upper House, putting it at the top of the world ranking. Though the cries that this situation is ‘donor-driven’ may have some validity, it appears that decision-making at other levels of society has also experienced similar drastic change towards equality. Interestingly enough in Cambodia, another country emerging from a recent and dark period of internal turmoil, whilst representation of women in civil service jobs remains very modest, where women can be elected to office this is happening. The 2008 National Elections saw an increase in women’s representation in the National Assembly where they now constitute 21% of membership bringing the level in Cambodia to above the regional average, and placing it in the range of China, Serbia and Italy, and above the UK.
Further reading:
Women Empowerment: participation decision-making
Zed Books Ltd London, New Jersey