SOUTH ASIA: Women Have More Clout, but Still Look for Men’s Support

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Apr 30 2001 (IPS) - While women are ready for the rough and tumble of local politics in South Asia’s tumultuous towns and cities, family prestige and the support of their menfolk often remain indispensable for career success.

Anita Arya, who served as mayor of New Delhi, India’s capital, attributes her smooth graduation to national politics and election to the Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament) in 1999 to support from her husband and in-laws.

Anita’s husband Praveen, who took care of their two children while Anita was campaigning for the 1999 general elections from the noisy and overcrowded Karol Bagh constituency in the heart of the city, thinks their marriage enhanced her image among voters.

“The fact that my husband accompanied me to election meetings helped my image a great deal, ” Arya said. But she added that her nomination as the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) candidate was the result of “good public dealings” as councillor and mayor.

Arya’s and other South Asian women’s experiences in local politics will be the focus of the Asia-Pacific Summit of Women Mayors and Councillors to be held in Phitsanulok, Thailand in June, organised by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission (ESCAP) and other United Nations agencies.

After all, “India has made great strides by reserving for women a third of seats in local bodies,” said Arya, who holds a doctorate. “But the high rate of illiteracy among women in the rural areas meant that they continue to be disempowered — though women from the urban elite are far different.”

According to activist of Iranian origin Haleh Afshar, elite Indian women actually have better access to public life compared to their British counterparts, because the Indian elite expects more from its daughters.

Afshar holds that women from India’s urban elite expect to do well in fields as varied as politics, medicine or business and many use their own abilities, family prestige, networks and resources as effectively as do their brothers or husbands.

The situation is similar in the other South Asian countries, including Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, where women who have succeeded in local politics usually come from powerful, well-connected families.

Sunethra Wickramasingha, an opposition councillor in the Colombo Municipal Council, says her entry into local politics was strongly influenced by her late maternal uncle, D S Mallwarachi, a member of the leftist Lanka Samasamja Party who served in the council for 12 years.

The only woman member in the council, Sunethra says a deterrent to women is the popular perception that there is a high level of corruption in local politics. “The name tag of politicians is not perceived as good and honest in Sri Lankan society,” she explains.

A country report prepared for the Thailand summit notes that most Sri Lankan women councillors are also mothers and had to manage households, which means mean they had “little or no time to participate in political activity”.

Sunethra believes that legislation to reserve a minimum number of seats for women in councils and local bodies is essential, if greater participation is to become a reality in Sri Lanka.

In Nepal, which by law reserved one-fifth of seats in its 58 municipalities for women in 1999, the success of the first lot of beneficiaries has depended again on their social standing, connections and whether they were literate or not.

Although the women’s quota in local seats is a positive step, “the reality is still that women rarely participate in the field of community-related development work”, says the Nepal report for the June summit.

One exception is Shanti Devi Shrestha, who holds a tertiary degree and was encouraged by her brother and her husband to run for public office. Shrestha, a ward member of Lalitpur sub-metropolitan city, is confident that the increasing number of women in local government will have a direct effect on women’s status in Nepal.

Sukmaya Gurung, a member of the municipal council of Pokhara, a well-known tourist destination, says her illiteracy and that of others who benefited from the reservation of local seats, is proving to be a serious handicap.

No more than three out of every 10 Nepali women can read and write, compared to the national male literacy level of 66 percent.

Women local leaders in Bangladesh say patriarchal attitudes cannot easily be overcome in spite of good connections and family support.

Joly Kabir, a woman ward commissioner of the Dhaka City Corp (DCC), is affiliated to the ruling Awami League party and has close relatives in politics or government. Both her grandfathers, her father and husband are active in politics.

Women commissioners in Bangladesh are politically conscious from childhood and in some cases, their husbands were selected by their parents with consideration to the political affiliation of the prospective groom’s family, the Bangladesh report for the women mayors’ summit says.

But Kabir, in spite of her connections, says she and other women who hold similar positions face discrimination and hostility from male colleagues especially when they are engaged in high-profile public activity.

She contends that prevailing social attitudes and the system erect barriers to women’s participation in local government.

The country report notes that the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina Wajed, and the opposition leader Begum Khaleda Zia are women, but that their high positions do not reflect the whole picture.

Both women owe their positions to their family backgrounds. Sheikh Hasina’s father was the founder and first prime minister of Bangladesh, and her political rival is the widow of a man who led a military coup and later became president.

Women councillors in Pakistan face greater opposition from extreme patriarchal attitudes than elsewhere on the sub-continent, where there is in general considerable disparity between the status of women and men.

Women from elite backgrounds and good political connections who have sought election to city councils complain they have not been able to make much of an impact.

Gul Noor Bugtti, a member of the Quetta Municipal Council, has both her husband and a brother in active politics and holds a tertiary degree, but is still struggling to be accepted in the male-dominated local government after nearly a year of service.

Bugtti, who is in her thirties and has four children, feels that her approach and work style is different from that of her male colleagues mainly because women’s work is limited by a shortage of funds allocated.

She says there should be direct elections for women’s seats and security provisions for women contestants to get more of them to run in local elections.

Older women like Hameeda Begum, councillor from Noshki town, who has three sons who are in politics and was encouraged by her husband to run for office, seem to have an easier time.

In her fifties and having served three terms in office, Begum thinks that people’s attitudes toward women in local government has changed over the last decade. She says she personally has not faced discrimination as a woman.

But Begum confesses that her contribution to urban local government has not made any difference in the way in which her city functions.