SOUTH ASIA: Why is Political Power a Male Prerogative?

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Feb 9 1998 (IPS) - South Asia has produced more women heads of government than any other region in the world. They have been either daughters or wives of prominent politicians in their country.

While Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka became the world’s first prime minister in 1959 on the assassination of her husband, others who shot to the top were Indira Gandhi in India, Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina Wajed in Bangladesh.

Wajed is her country’s present prime minister, and daughter of its slain independence leader while Khaleda Zia, her predecessor in power, is the widow of a former president.

Both India’s Gandhi and Pakistan’s Bhutto were daughters of former prime minister’s. Sri Lanka’s present president, Chandrika Kumaratunga, is a Bandaranaike, the former prime minister’s daughter whose election victory in 1994 returned power to the hands of the island’s foremost political dynasty.

Evidently it is family connections on which these South Asian women have vaulted to the top in a region where politics is the preserve of men. Women are still starkly absent in politics and decision-making at all levels of government.

For long, researchers have been saying that there is a complicated matrix of forces at play that results in a very low percentage of women accessing positions that enable and empower them to be active in political decision-making.

Now, the Colombo-based International Centre for Ethnic Studies (ICES) is preparing to launch a project to study the role of women in governance in South Asia. The countries under scrutiny are India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and also Malaysia.

Says Dr. Radhika Coomaraswamy, one of the directors of ICES and U.N Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women: “The percentage of women in political decision-making is poor. We need to find the causes and reasons for this.”

Sharing a preliminary paper published by ICES with IPS, she said the project would try to get to the root of the problem in a region that had, and still has the privilege of electing women as heads of government.

“It (would be) reasonable to assume therefore, that there would be substantial numbers of women members of Parliament to parallel this (achievement),” she told IPS.

But the figures of women in politics compiled by ICES researcher Yasmin Tambiah show otherwise. Bangladesh leads the list of countries with 11.2 percent of members of Parliament being women.

In India, it was 7.2 percent in the last Parliament, dissolved last November in preparation for mid-term polls; in Malaysia, 7.8 percent; Pakistan, 2.8 percent; Singapore, 3.4 percent; and Sri Lanka, 4.8 percent.

An Inter-Parliamentary Union study shows that Asia ranks lower than all other regions excepting the Arab states in its percentage of women in the lower house of Parliament with the worldwide average being 11.4 percent. The Nordic countries are on top with 36 percent of members being women.

Most of the countries, surveyed in the ICES study, are signatories of the U.N Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and committed to giving women the right to vote and run for political office.

Social and cultural values of many Asian communities still confine women and girls to the “private” sphere of the household and family, barring them from being active in the “public” arena, which necessarily characterises political activity.

“Given that the social esteem accorded to a woman is still frequently articulated in terms of presumed or actual sexual behaviour, which is usually connected with her presumed or actual conduct in relation to associating with men (or ‘male’ space which is how ‘public space’ is inscribed) many women fear the consequences of being branded as ‘un-feminine’ or of ‘bad repute’ for engaging with the ‘public’ sphere,” ICES said.

In addition, the “dual/double workload” experienced by most women, regardless of class status left little time and energy for the demands of sustained political activity, ICES found. Women were still primarily responsible for household chores and caring for children and for elderly or sick relatives, while economic necessity increasingly compelled them to work outside the home.

Among other factors limiting women’s role in decision-making

are a high level of female illiteracy; violence against women in both private and public spheres compounded by situations of increasing violence in political culture; sexual harassment by male colleagues; corruption in politics and, that few women candidates are nominated by political parties to contest elections in any case.

ICES said that in spite of these limited factors, some countries have taken steps to encourage women to enter politics.

In Bangladesh, 30 of the 330 parliamentary seats have been set aside for women, while in Pakistan’s Punjab province, the state government reserves one-third of all local council seats for women.

In India, women’s groups and the National Commission for Women have been trying to persuade political parties to back a proposal to set aside a third of seats in Parliament for women.

Elsewhere in Malaysia, a National Policy on Women Action Plan is attempting to deal with politics and leadership, and has proposed a number of strategies targeting women and men, women leaders, political party leaders and ministries.

In Sri Lanka, government proposals for a new constitution have provided for a 25 percent quota to women at provincial and local government levels. That women must be given a place in the political arena is both incontestable and widely recognised by South Asia’s governments.