WOMEN IN POLITICS: PROMISING DEVELOPMENTS IN EASTERN EUROPE AND THE ARAB COUNTRIES
"Gender parity is at the core of democratic governance", says Dr. Najma Heptulla, President of the Council of the Inter-Parliamentary Union. Yet with a modest 14.3% of women in Parliaments worldwide, the kind of gender paritparity and partnership in politics consistently advocated by the IPU as a key to democracy is far away. It is quite clear that the world has not yet fully recovered from the huge drop in the number of women in parliaments that occurred as a result of the collapse of the communist system in the 1990s: in 1988, women accounted for 14.8% of all parliamentarians, whereas they represented only 11.3% in 1995. However, a closer look at the IPU graphs showing developments following elections in 38 countries around the world in 2001, as compared with the results of the last five years, combined with certain political and legal developments, do give grounds for cautious optimism, especially for Eastern European and Arab countries.
In Eastern Europe, the major leap made by three countries (+15.4 percentage points1 in Bulgaria, +7.2 points in Poland; +5 points in the Republic of Moldova) is a welcome sign of a change and may even give an indication that women and the electorate have overcome part of the post-1989 trauma.
This contrasts with the relative stagnation in the Nordic countries, even though, with an average of 38.8% women MPs, they remain in the lead. Denmark and Norway, which held elections in 2001 and have among the most gender-balanced parliaments of the world (38% women MPs in Denmark, 36.4% in Norway), have recorded little or no progress, disappointing women’s hopes to pass the 40% mark: Denmark, +0.6 percentage points; no change for Norway.
In traditional Western democracies, the trend is uneven. Although a slight decline can be seen in the United Kingdom (-0.5 percentage points) and Italy (-1.7 points), an encouraging rise is visible in Liechtenstein (+8 points) and also in France where, following the introduction of a parity law for proportionally elected senatorial seats, the percentage of women in the upper house jumped from 5.9% to 10.9%.
In the Arab countries, politics is still firmly controlled by men: women account for a scant 4.6% of all Arab MPs on average. Yet a number of encouraging signs point to a positive change, if not always as a result of a new gender awareness among the public, at least as part of a stated political will. In a 2001 referendum in Bahrain, voters approved proposed reforms which include measures enabling women to vote and stand for office in parliamentary elections. These measures will apply for the elections scheduled for October 2002. In Qatar, the authorities show an interest in promoting women's political participation and are planning a seminar on the subject. The Djiboutian authorities are doing their utmost to ensure that women, who have enjoyed the right to vote and be elected since 1946 but have never been elected to Parliament, will finally win seats in the forthcoming elections. In Morocco, the future Electoral Law establishes a 10% quota of women in the House of Representatives. Similarly, the Socialist Union of Popular Forces (USFP), the majority party in Morocco, has already introduced an internal quota for women.
A similar but more daring move can be seen in another Muslim country, Niger, where a law to be applied for the 2002 elections will compel political parties to make sure that their lists include men and women candidates, so that each sex accounts for at least 10% of the candidates elected. By targeting men as much as women and introducing a minimum “gender floor” rather than a “gender ceiling” on parties, this law is one that coincides with IPU’s criteria.
These developments contrast with the situation in Bangladesh, the country where women suffered the greatest setback in 2001: although women formerly accounted for 9% of all members of Parliament, they now represent a mere 2%. The expiration of the quota law (the renewal of which will be studied by Parliament at its next session), reserving 30 supplementary seats for appointed women MPs, is certainly one of the reasons for this decline. Reserving seats is sometimes the only possible expression of a political will for change at the government level. It is clear however that, beyond its temporary effectiveness, this type of affirmative action generally proves insufficient to generate the complementary "ingredient" without which no real change can be achieved: gender-sensitivity among parties and voters.
In other parts of the world, the percentage of women MPs hovers around an average of 13-15. In 2001, developing countries recorded substantial increases overall in the proportion of women in national Parliaments: +11 points in Nicaragua, +7 points (approximately) in Senegal, the Philippines and Uganda. St Vincent and the Grenadines tops the list with the election of 5 women out of 22 MPs, resulting in a gain of 18 percentage points, compared with the previous legislature.
In general, men continue to predominate among the presiding officers of parliament. Only 24 of the 244 presiding officers (of both lower and upper houses) are women, most of them in developing countries. In Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, Jamaica, Spain and South Africa, women are at the helm in both Houses of Parliament.
The figures in percentage points reflect the difference between the percentage of women in parliament further to the 2001 elections and the previous legislature.
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Established in 1889 and with its Headquarters in Geneva, the IPU, the oldest multilateral organisation, currently has 142 affiliated national parliaments and five regional assemblies as associate members. The organisation of the world's parliaments also has a Liaison Office with the United Nations in New York.
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