RIGHTS-SRI LANKA: Slowly, Women Make Mark in Public Life

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Mar 28 2001 (IPS) - After a decade in public life in Sri Lanka, Indrani Gunawathi wants to quit in frustration.

For over a year, Gunawathi, the only woman in the 20-member urban council of the country’s administrative capital of Sri Jayawardhanapura, bordering Colombo, has been trying in vain to ensure justice for her constituents.

But the local mayor is not taking her seriously “because I am a woman”, and is going ahead with the plan to build a road cutting across land belonging to them.

Gunawathi has tried hard to ensure that proper procedures are followed in the acquisition of land for the road.

The diminutive councillor, who belongs to Sri Lanka’s ruling People’s Alliance (PA), was close to tears at an early March council meeting when she clashed with the mayor over the issue.

“My constituents are pleading that either their land not be taken or proper compensation be paid and I just can’t get the mayor to be reasonable on this issue,” she said.

“The PA government doesn’t live up to its calls that more women should take to politics. It’s just lip service,” she complained.

However, Umma Thabiya Abdeen, an opposition councillor at the Dehiwela-Mount Lavinia Municipal Council, just outside Colombo, finds public life meaningful.

Though in opposition, she has been able to “bring some change”, such as the improvement of a children’s playground in the area. She says she has found support from councillors from all political parties.

Abdeen, a mother of five grown-up children and a member of Sri Lanka’s minority Muslim community, was encouraged by her husband to enter politics.

Sri Lanka’s main opposition United National Party (UNP) recognised her abilities and put her up as one of its candidates during the council elections.

“My entry as a municipal councillor should act as a catalyst to women, especially Muslim women, who come from conservative backgrounds,” says Abdeen.

The contrasting experiences of these women show that while politics is still largely a male preserve in the Indian Ocean island nation, a beginning has been made toward giving women a greater say in public life.

A survey of 18 women councillors in the country found 13 respondents of the view that they had brought about changes for the better in their local government institutions.

The findings of the survey are included in a report on the state of women in urban local government in Sri Lanka, prepared for the upcoming Asia-Pacific Summit of Women Mayors and Councillors.

The summit, organised by the Bangkok-based United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), will be held in Thailand in mid-2001.

Several of the women councillors felt they had been able to make their administrations more efficient, resulting in better services to the people.

The women politicians also expressed the need to educate both men and women to encourage more women to enter public life.

“They considered it necessary to conduct programmes aimed at…males to make them aware of the dual role of women in the society and of the need for women to enter the field of politics,” the report noted.

According to Sunila Abeyasekera, a U.N. human rights award winner and director of INFORM, a local human rights non-governmental organisation (NGO), men in Sri Lanka do not want to give women a chance in public life.

“It simply boils down to that — males are unwilling to give women a fair share of representation at local and national polls,” she says.

Only eight women were elected to Sri Lanka’s 225-member parliament in last year’s national election.

The situation in local bodies is even worse — women made up just 3.4 percent of representatives elected to municipal councils four years ago.

The country report for the Asia-Pacific mayors’ and councillors’ summit noted that most Sri Lankan women councillors are also mothers and have to manage households, “leaving little or no time to participate in political activity.”

“This is a clear manifestation of the nature of the role customarily assigned to women by society at large and also the outcome of unequal division of work in the household,” it observed.

Four of the women councillors quizzed by the survey said there was social disapproval for women entering politics. They also said that women were “dissuaded by their elders from participating in political activity.”

However, quite a few of those who have made it to office, are optimistic. “There are a lot of things women can do for women while in elected positions,” says Nalin Thilaka Herath, a member of the Nuwara Eliya Municipal Council.

Herath, mayor of the council between the years 1991 and 1997 — one of only three Sri Lankan women to serve as mayor — says she found working with men easy.

“Men gave us their cooperation. I did not have any problems but a lot more could be done if there are more women in politics,” she told IPS.

Women’s groups in the country were pinning hopes on local government polls scheduled for May, which have since been postponed indefinitely. There were plans to persuade parties to announce quotas for women candidates in the elections.

“Women’s groups were hoping to raise the issue of quotas through a women’s manifesto but alas the elections were postponed,” says Kumudini Samuel of the Women and Media Collective, a women’s rights advocacy group.

Sri Lanka’s political parties are still not keen to include women’s issues in their election promises, complains senior women’s rights advocate, Kumari Jayawardene.

Women’s rights leader Abeyasekera of INFORM, said that the dominant view in political parties is that politics is not the place for women.

Sri Lanka was lagging behind India, Nepal and Pakistan in reforming electoral laws to enable more women to contest local council polls, she said.

“When it comes to voting, women are guided by the men and family. They don’t take independent decisions on whom to vote for and political parties are aware of this,” she says.

Many of the women in Sri Lankan politics are political widows, like President Chandrika Kumaratunga whose politician-husband was killed by left-wing rebels in the late 1980s.

The president’s late mother, Sirimavo, became the world’s first woman prime minister in the year 1962, following the assassination of her premier-husband, Solomon Dias Bandaranaike.