Let's get on with women's progress
Saturday, 12 December 2009
Nerun Yakub
The State Minister for Women and Children's Affairs, Shirin Sharmin Chowdhury, let it be known recently that the government plans to announce its National Women's Development Policy soon. The revival of the post-Beijing, CEDAW-inspired 1997 policy, for which progressive women activists have been struggling over the past many years, seems most likely. Hopefully, that would also bring the reserved seats issue up for discussions and debate, allowing enough time and space for thrashing out the details in open discourse, before the requisite bill is presented in parliament.
The reserved seats provision for women in parliament has long been awaiting an honourable, pragmatic resolution ever since its original tenure expired long ago. But successive governments have used every trick to hold on to the lapsed provision, for obvious reasons ----- the practice of 'winner takes all'. Both the Awami League and the BNP are guilty of retrieving the provision during their terms, although both have been pledging in their election manifestoes that they would facilitate the proper participation of women in parliament. They had pledged to reserve a reasonable number of seats for women to which aspirants would be directly elected in open contest. The hope is that a bill to that effect would be drafted again and passed into law to put a stop to the practice of the winning party grabbing them en bloc for its selected candidates.
Given the fact that the present Grand Coalition government has a whopping majority in parliament, it could easily go for a proper bill, commensurate with the just demand of progressive groups that have long been calling for the rationalization of women's representation in parliament. The number of reserved seats have eventually been raised to 45, all as usual going to the winners. One hopes when the extended time for the provision expires this time, there would be no backsliding yet again. But it is too much to hope such a historic change would come before the present term is over.
What the coalition of progressive women have been proposing over the years is to scrap the inherently undemocratic system of selecting party followers or sympathizers rather than electing candidates to the reserved seats. They initially proposed that one third of the seats be reserved for women in parliament for direct election. After all, there is no point in maintaining a façade of political representation of women when they mostly, barring one or two, serve as appendages to the power-wielding male politicians. Political expediency and unenlightened patriarchal attitudes over the past decades had helped the ' political system' to effectively co-opt the women's quota in parliament and transform the selected female MPs into so many puppets, if not, mum manniquins. This has been a great disservice, not only to the women but also the nation at large. If women are to play a meaningful role in the making of national policy and effecting pro-people development, the space must be created to get their political voice heard.
Selection must therefore go sooner rather than later. It subverts the very spirit and purpose of the provision, which, in the first place, was meant to provide women representatives a hands-on experience in parliament, and to gradually empower them politically, thereby paving the way for the free and full participation of women in national politics. Unfortunately, the socio-political culture all around is yet to be women-friendly. The 'system' is far too vitiating for most politically aspiring women candidates. This is why space must be created through a well-thought out Women's Development Policy. But efforts to formulate and implement one since 1997 had been coming up against different snags. Apart from getting mangled along the way under various political dispensations, the WDP seems to have remained stuck in mere declarations of intent and reiterations.
Precious little has been realized so far with regard to establishing gender justice in national life, but the directive to use the mother's name alongside the father's in official biodata does have good symbolic value. The move was made by Sheikh Hasina soon after the policy was drafted. However, the avowedly secular Awami League government during its first term, seemed to be too fettered to its religion-based political partners, and was therefore unable to make much headway. There was a lot of hullabullo from obscurantist quarters about some clauses, specifically on equal rights to inheritance. Rigid and literal interpreters of the Quranic principles of sharing inheritance would not have the CEDAW-ordained equality between men and women in Muslim-dominated Bangladesh. So Sheikh Hasina was stopped in her tracks.
The same factor influenced the four-party coalition government of Begum Khaleda Zia. It was found to revise the 1997 WDP surreptitiously, and release it in 2004, ignoring the core questions of women's rights, which, to all intents and purposes, seemed to have turned into a hot potato ! The last Army-backed Caretaker government however appeared bolder, trashing the BNP-revised, backward-looking policy and announcing its own version in 2008. This, reportedly, is not much different from the 1997 policy. But the Caretaker government failed to implement it. We are told, the CTG had its own 'limitations'.
A workable WDP will hopefully come alive under the present Grand Coalition government which has indicated its intentions already, forging ahead by appointing competent women in key cabinet positions. However, the present government's determination to bring its 1997 policy out of the cellar rather than get on with the updated 2008 version, seems to many to be unnecessary, as both are the same in principle. Unless there is some quarter the government wishes to please with a drafting job, the 2008 version should suffice.
The State Minister for Women and Children's Affairs, Shirin Sharmin Chowdhury, let it be known recently that the government plans to announce its National Women's Development Policy soon. The revival of the post-Beijing, CEDAW-inspired 1997 policy, for which progressive women activists have been struggling over the past many years, seems most likely. Hopefully, that would also bring the reserved seats issue up for discussions and debate, allowing enough time and space for thrashing out the details in open discourse, before the requisite bill is presented in parliament.
The reserved seats provision for women in parliament has long been awaiting an honourable, pragmatic resolution ever since its original tenure expired long ago. But successive governments have used every trick to hold on to the lapsed provision, for obvious reasons ----- the practice of 'winner takes all'. Both the Awami League and the BNP are guilty of retrieving the provision during their terms, although both have been pledging in their election manifestoes that they would facilitate the proper participation of women in parliament. They had pledged to reserve a reasonable number of seats for women to which aspirants would be directly elected in open contest. The hope is that a bill to that effect would be drafted again and passed into law to put a stop to the practice of the winning party grabbing them en bloc for its selected candidates.
Given the fact that the present Grand Coalition government has a whopping majority in parliament, it could easily go for a proper bill, commensurate with the just demand of progressive groups that have long been calling for the rationalization of women's representation in parliament. The number of reserved seats have eventually been raised to 45, all as usual going to the winners. One hopes when the extended time for the provision expires this time, there would be no backsliding yet again. But it is too much to hope such a historic change would come before the present term is over.
What the coalition of progressive women have been proposing over the years is to scrap the inherently undemocratic system of selecting party followers or sympathizers rather than electing candidates to the reserved seats. They initially proposed that one third of the seats be reserved for women in parliament for direct election. After all, there is no point in maintaining a façade of political representation of women when they mostly, barring one or two, serve as appendages to the power-wielding male politicians. Political expediency and unenlightened patriarchal attitudes over the past decades had helped the ' political system' to effectively co-opt the women's quota in parliament and transform the selected female MPs into so many puppets, if not, mum manniquins. This has been a great disservice, not only to the women but also the nation at large. If women are to play a meaningful role in the making of national policy and effecting pro-people development, the space must be created to get their political voice heard.
Selection must therefore go sooner rather than later. It subverts the very spirit and purpose of the provision, which, in the first place, was meant to provide women representatives a hands-on experience in parliament, and to gradually empower them politically, thereby paving the way for the free and full participation of women in national politics. Unfortunately, the socio-political culture all around is yet to be women-friendly. The 'system' is far too vitiating for most politically aspiring women candidates. This is why space must be created through a well-thought out Women's Development Policy. But efforts to formulate and implement one since 1997 had been coming up against different snags. Apart from getting mangled along the way under various political dispensations, the WDP seems to have remained stuck in mere declarations of intent and reiterations.
Precious little has been realized so far with regard to establishing gender justice in national life, but the directive to use the mother's name alongside the father's in official biodata does have good symbolic value. The move was made by Sheikh Hasina soon after the policy was drafted. However, the avowedly secular Awami League government during its first term, seemed to be too fettered to its religion-based political partners, and was therefore unable to make much headway. There was a lot of hullabullo from obscurantist quarters about some clauses, specifically on equal rights to inheritance. Rigid and literal interpreters of the Quranic principles of sharing inheritance would not have the CEDAW-ordained equality between men and women in Muslim-dominated Bangladesh. So Sheikh Hasina was stopped in her tracks.
The same factor influenced the four-party coalition government of Begum Khaleda Zia. It was found to revise the 1997 WDP surreptitiously, and release it in 2004, ignoring the core questions of women's rights, which, to all intents and purposes, seemed to have turned into a hot potato ! The last Army-backed Caretaker government however appeared bolder, trashing the BNP-revised, backward-looking policy and announcing its own version in 2008. This, reportedly, is not much different from the 1997 policy. But the Caretaker government failed to implement it. We are told, the CTG had its own 'limitations'.
A workable WDP will hopefully come alive under the present Grand Coalition government which has indicated its intentions already, forging ahead by appointing competent women in key cabinet positions. However, the present government's determination to bring its 1997 policy out of the cellar rather than get on with the updated 2008 version, seems to many to be unnecessary, as both are the same in principle. Unless there is some quarter the government wishes to please with a drafting job, the 2008 version should suffice.