Daily Star - Baroud To Champion 30 Percent Womens Quota In Politics

By Dalila Mahdawi
Daily Star staff

BEIRUT: Lebanese women should play a greater role in political life, gender equality campaigners said on Friday as Interior Minister Ziyad Baroud promised to champion a 30 percent quota for women in upcoming municipal elections. Presenting the study, “The Participation of the Lebanese Woman in the Parliamentary Elections 2009,” the Lebanese Council of Women (LCW) pointed to the need for Lebanon to introduce a quota system to encourage greater political involvement by women.
LCW president Aman Kabbara Chaarani said that while women faced no legal obstacles in the political field, not enough was being done to “ensure real participation of women as candidates and voters.” Chaarani also said the abolition of Lebanon’s sectarian political system would further boost women’s participation.
Women in Lebanon were granted suffrage in 1953, but continue to face considerable obstacles entering politics in a deeply patriarchal society where tribal affiliations and political families hold sway.
Lebanon’s parliamentary elections in June were widely hailed as the most competitive in years. Out of 587 candidates, however, only 12 were women, a figure that translates into a mere 2 percent. Out of those 12, only four – Nayla Tueni, Bahia Hariri, Strida Geagea and Gilberte Zouein– were elected to Lebanon’s 128-member Parliament. In a further blow, only two women, Raya Haffar Hassan and Mona Ofeish, were selected for Cabinet posts, as finance minister and state minister, respectively.
According to the LCW study, more women voted in the elections than men (52.4 percent compared to 49.9 percent), but more than two-thirds did not vote for women candidates.
“There is schizophrenia in Lebanon between what we say and what we do,” said Baroud, a key ally of the gender equality movement. “A lot is being said about the rights of women but little has changed.”
Baroud added that he would next week re-submit to Parliament a proposal for a temporary 30 percent quota for women in politics.
In 2005, the Boutros Commission drafted an electoral law that included introducing a 30 percent women’s quota, but it was rejected.
Quota systems have been proven to work said UNDP Deputy Resident Representative Nick Hartman on behalf of his superior Marta Ruedas.
“Women’s representation has increased in countries that introduced some form of quota into their electoral systems,” he said. The UNDP funded LCW’s study as part of its Support to the Elections Project.
“The failure to increase women’s participation [as candidates] in the 2009 parliamentary elections should be an additional reason to call for the adoption of some form of quota in the coming 2010 municipal polls,” Hartman added.
“The study has revealed many of the particularities of the Lebanese case,” he said, “which should be very useful in developing a national strategy for women’s participation in municipal elections.”
The UNDP representative also noted that a campaign to grant women nationality rights, being led by social justice organization the Collective for Research and Training on Development-Action, signaled a “louder and more persistent” call for gender equality in Lebanese society.
Lebanese law currently allows male citizens married to foreigners to pass their nationality onto their wives and children, but doesn’t allow Lebanese women to do the same. Denied Lebanese nationality, thousands of families regularly face the threat of deportation, are required to pay regular residency permit fees, and face serious obstacles entering the job market or obtaining affordable education or health care.
The study comes on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women, often seen as the international bill of rights for women. Lebanon ratified the convention in 1996, but maintains reservations on Article 9, pertaining to nationality, Article 16, regarding marriage and family life, and Article 29, relating to arbitration.