Sri Lanka Human Development Report 2012.pdf

Women’s engagement
Currently, there are 13 women members of Parliament out
of a total of 225; the portion is less than 6 percent, a figure
that has remained unchanged from 2004 to 2010 (Table
6.6). This is not a recent trend, since women’s representation
in political institutions has been minimal in the 60 years
since independence, despite a constitutional guarantee of
equality, policy statements about commitments to equal
representation, the ratification of the Convention on
the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against
Women (CEDAW), and sustained activism and advocacy
by civil society organizations. 320
Reasons for the low representation of women in politics 321
start at the personal level, where fewer women than men
self-select themselves for a political career because of sociocultural,
economic and psychological barriers. In political
parties, women are mostly ignored as candidates, and in
elections, many voters prefer to vote for men.
Available evidence suggests that political parties are the
single biggest barrier to women’s greater participation
in politics. The Women and Media Collective noted in
2011 that, “the main obstacle to women’s equal political
representation remains within Political Parties, since
they do not nominate an equitable number of women to
contest elections.” 322 Of the 6,060 persons nominated for
Parliament in 2004, only 375, or 6.2 percent, were women,
close to the share in Parliament.
Recently, there has been an increase in the number and
percentage of women nominated, 323 but this mainly
results from greater competition for political support
based on proportional representation. Because this may
be a strategy to attract voters, and because nominations
do not equal representation, women are likely to remain
largely excluded from politics.
The major political parties have only shown limited
commitment to enhancing their political representation,
despite heavy national advocacy and campaigning by
various groups. For the 2010 parliamentary election, the
United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) and the United
National Front (UNF) each nominated 15 women out
of a total of 262 nominations (5.7 percent). The smaller
political party, the Democratic National Alliance (DNA),
nominated women as only 3.4 percent of candidates.
The share of women nominated in 2008-2009 was even
smaller: 4.3 percent by the UPFA, 3.8 percent by the UNF
and 3.3 percent by the JVP (Table 6.7).
Undeterred, the Women and Media Collective has actively
lobbied political parties to increase nominations of women.
It has sought to engage women in political campaigns and
encourage voters to choose women candidates regardless
of political party. Recent advocacy campaigns have called
for the introduction of a quota for women in nomination
lists, as well as the imposition of a 40 percent quota in
Parliament. These demands remain unmet, however, while
the motivation of political parties and the Government to
move forward is not coming forth.
At the sub-national level, women’s representation
improved only marginally from 1966 to 2006: from 1.1
percent to 3 percent in the municipal councils, and from
1.9 percent to 3.4 percent in the urban councils. Among
the pradeshiya sabhas, women occupied a mere 1.6 percent
of positions. 324 From 2002 onwards, the representation of
women at the provincial and local levels has decreased,
even as it remained largely unchanged in Parliament.
The ethnic make-up is wholly in favor of one group.
The Women and Media Collective notes that, “the majority
of women currently represented in elected political
institutions are women from the Sinhala Community;
women from the minority Tamil and Muslim communities
are further marginalized from these bodies. There is only
one Tamil woman and no Muslim woman in the current
Parliament.” 325
Chapter 6 Bridging Governance Gaps: State Capacity and People’s Participation 115