National Council of Resistance of Iran Urge Iran to Release Female Political Prisoners
New
Age Islam News Bureau
12
March 2021
•
Loujain Al-Hathloul's Appeal, To Travel Freely, Rejected By Saudi Court
•
Women Bike Race To Kick Off In Riyadh On Friday
•
Hussy, Mistress, Whore, Evil Woman Listed Under the Entry for 'Woman' In
Indonesia's Official Dictionary
•
Women Once Enslaved by ISIS Are Reunited With Their Children
•
Turkey Detains 13 For ‘Insulting’ Erdogan on Women’s Day
•
In Pakistan, Women Politicians Struggle For Nominations To Men’s Seats
Compiled
by New Age Islam News Bureau
URL: https://www.newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/national-council-resistance-iran-urge/d/124526
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National
Council of Resistance of Iran Urge Iran to Release Female Political Prisoners
Maryam Akbari Monfared (L) is now in Iran's Semnan
Prison, while Golrokh Ebrahimi Eraei (R) has been beaten and taken to Amol
Prison. (NCRI)
-----
March
11, 2021
CHICAGO:
Leaders of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) called on the UN
to intervene and release two women whose families have been the targets of
violence and death by the Iranian regime.
According
to the NCRI, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard (IRG) forcibly removed political prisoner
Maryam Akbari Monfared from the women’s ward of Evin Prison, where she has been
for the past 12 years, and transferred her to the Semnan Prison.
Maryam
Rajavi, the NCRI President-elect, said that despite protests from other
prisoners, IRG and prison guards physically dragged Akbari Monfared from her
cell.
Rajavi
said that Iran’s clerical regime has already executed three of Akbari
Monfared’s brothers and a sister. Alireza Akbari, a member of the People's
Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), was executed in 1981. Gholamreza
Akbari, also a member of MEK, was murdered under torture in 1985. MEK members
Abdulreza and Roghiyeh Akbari were executed during the 1988 massacre.
Akbari
Monfared was arrested shortly after the 2009 uprising in Iran and later
sentenced to 15 years in prison. During the past 12 years, she has been denied
necessary medical treatment, Rajavi said.
Rajavi
also said urgent attention should be given to another female prisoner, Golrokh
Ebrahimi Eraei, who was beaten and taken to Amol Prison in Northern Iran on
Jan. 24. Ebrahimi Eraei had previously been held at the Qarchak Prison in
Varamin.
The
NCRI leaders urged the UN and Western countries to force Iran to allow welfare
checks on all imprisoned dissidents, including women.
“On
International Women's Day, the Iranian Resistance strongly condemns the
forcible exile of Maryam Akbari Monfared and Golrokh Ebrahimi Eraei,” Rajavi
said.
“We
urge the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and international human rights
organizations to take immediate action to secure the release of these two
resilient women political prisoners.”
Rajavi
has repeatedly asked for an international delegation to visit the clerical
regime’s prisons and meet with prisoners, especially political prisoners.
Rajavi has also urged Dubravka Simonovic, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence
against Women, to investigate the health conditions of both Akbari Monfared and
Ebrahimi Eraei.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1823946/middle-east
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Loujain
Al-Hathloul's Appeal, To Travel Freely, Rejected By Saudi Court
Loujain al-Hathloul on her way to the state
security court in Riyadh on Wednesday. Photograph: Ahmed Yosri/Reuters
-----
March
12, 2021
(CNN)A
Saudi court has rejected an appeal by prominent women's rights activist Loujain
al-Hathloul that would have allowed her to travel freely, her family and
supporters said.
The
31-year-old was sentenced in December to five years and eight months in prison
on what critics have described as politically motivated charges, but was
released in February after serving more than 1,000 days behind bars. She was
appealing for her sentence to be overturned and a five-year travel ban lifted.
On
her way into the appeals hearing Wednesday, Hathloul told reporters she hoped
Riyadh's Specialized Criminal Court would change her sentence -- her first
public comments since her arrest in 2018. The court, however, ruled that the
original sentence should stand.
"The
judge denied the appeal and confirmed the sentence to five years and eight
months in prison which includes 3 years of probation and 5 years of a travel
ban during which Loujain cannot leave Saudi Arabia at any time," according
to a statement by her campaign.
Hathloul
was detained in May 2018 during a sweep that targeted other well-known
opponents of the kingdom's since-rescinded law barring women from driving. She
had also challenged other legal restrictions on Saudi women enforced under the
kingdom's restrictive male guardianship system.
She
told her family she had been tortured and sexually abused in prison --
allegations Riyadh has repeatedly denied -- and her detention was condemned by
the United Nations and international rights groups.
Hathloul's
sentence, according to her campaign, includes restrictions signed by her that
state she "cannot speak publicly about her case or reveal any details
regarding prison nor celebrate her release on a public level."
In
a statement in December, Hathloul's family said she would remain on probation
for three years, during which time she could be arrested for any perceived
illegal activity.
Her
release in February came less than a week after the White House called on the
kingdom to release political prisoners, including women's rights activists. US
President Joe Biden has vowed to pressure Saudi Arabia into improving its
rights record, marking a departure from the Trump administration, which was
reluctant to criticize the kingdom's crackdown on dissent.
The
terrorism court convicted Hathloul on charges of harming national security,
seeking to change the Saudi political system, and using her relations with
foreign governments and rights groups to "pressure the Kingdom to change
its laws and systems," according to a charge sheet her family published in
December.
UN
experts have called the charges against Hathloul "spurious." In a
six-page charge sheet for Hathloul's case, seen by CNN, a section entitled
"crimes committed" includes activism against the kingdom's
restrictive male guardianship laws, along with contact with foreign journalists
and diplomats.
The
charges also relied on a series of alleged confessions, according to the
documents, which state that Hathloul admitted to applying for a job at the UN
along with confessing to being in contact with the human rights groups Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch.
For
much of her imprisonment, Hathloul detailed her hardships to her parents during
their prison visits. Those allegations were later made public by three of her
siblings who live outside the kingdom, and were corroborated by the court
testimony of other female activists.
Hathloul
said she was sexually assaulted and tortured while in detention, including
waterboarding, flogging and electrocution, according to multiple statements
released by her family and supporters.
Saudi
authorities have repeatedly denied allegations of torture and sexual abuse in
their prisons.
According
to her family, Hathloul has twice gone on hunger strike -- in protest at her
prison conditions, and because she was denied communication with her relatives.
Hathloul's
sister, Lina al-Hathloul, who has been a driving force behind an international
campaign for her release, shared a photo of her sister going into court on
Wednesday and reacted to the ruling.
"The
international community should be outraged at this judgment and really take
time to study their conscience as they continue to do business with Saudi
Arabia," Lina Al-Hathloul said Wednesday, according to the campaign.
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/10/middleeast/hathloul-saudi-court-upholds-sentence-intl/index.html
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Women
Bike Race to Kick Off In Riyadh on Friday
The 15-kilometer individual time trial race,
designated for female citizens, will start at 3 p.m. from Gate 5 of Princess
Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University on the street leading to King Khalid
International Airport. — File photo
------
March
11, 2021
RIYADH
— The capital Riyadh is scheduled on Friday to host a bicycle race for women to
be organized by Saudi Cycling Federation as part of its 2021 calendar for local
sports season.
The
15-kilometer individual time trial race, designated for female citizens, will
start at 3 p.m. from Gate 5 of Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University on
the street leading to King Khalid International Airport.
Princess
Mashael Bint Faisal, head of the women committee at the federation, said that
the race is an effective step toward empowering women to practice cycling and a
first step for them to be professional cyclists in the future, especially that
this type of races helps enhance the skills of cyclists.
Princess
Mashael stressed that Saudi Cycling Federation spares no effort in supporting
this activity and spreading it among Saudi women, adding that the federation
will continue its support and encouragement to practice this sport, citing the
federation's formation of the women empowerment committee.
Princess
Mashael also expressed appreciation and gratitude for Minister of Sports Prince
Abdulaziz Bin Turki Al-Faisal for his sincere efforts to support sports in
general, particularly cycling.
https://saudigazette.com.sa/article/604343/SAUDI-ARABIA/Women-bike-race-to-kick-off-in-Riyadh-on-Friday
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Hussy,
Mistress, Whore, Evil Woman Listed Under the Entry for 'Woman' In Indonesia's
Official Dictionary
MAR
11, 2021
Hussy,
mistress, whore, evil woman - these are just some of the nine example compound
words that artist Ika Vantiani was shocked to find listed under the entry for
'woman' or 'perempuan' in Indonesia's official dictionary.
All
nine were sexualised or derogatory terms. In contrast, in the entry for
'laki-laki', one of the words for man, there is just one example, 'laki-laki
jemputan', which means a 'man chosen as a son-in-law'. Another word for man,
'pria' also lists one term: 'pria idaman' meaning 'heartthrob'.
Since
making this discovery in 2016, Ika has campaigned through her art for change
and as part of that she has assiduously collected editions of the Kamus Besar
Bahasa Indonesia, which is compiled by a government agency and is the standard
dictionary used in schools and by teachers.
"Perempuan
jalang, this one actually means slut. That is the one word that keeps popping
up in every edition," she told Reuters.
"The
focus is on examples that include words like pelacur or jalang - meaning whore,
a woman who loves to sell herself, nasty women, mistress."
Last
November, the Oxford University Press said it would change the entries for
'woman' in its dictionaries to include more positive and active descriptions
and Ika is hoping for a similar result.
The
campaign has drawn attention to what critics say is a patriarchal culture in
the world's biggest Muslim majority country. Ika has also gained the support of
Indonesia's National Commission on Violence against Women which this year
called for a revision.
Language,
the commission said, "played an important role in building the values of
gender equality and the elimination of violence against women".
Ika
and her male colleague, Yolando Zelkeos Siahaya, have highlighted the issue in
a series of workshops and exhibitions, including one at the Indonesian national
gallery in 2018.
One
work featured clear sheets of acrylic with the dictionary entry for 'perempuan'
printed across them so that viewers could imagine being referred to in that
way.
"Most
people when they see this work of mine, they are shocked," said Ika.
"They say: 'I never would have thought that is how the word 'woman' is
defined in our dictionary.'"
Last
month her work, which include t-shirts that call for change to the entry and
were worn at a women’s march in 2020, provoked a response from Badan Bahasa,
the agency responsible for the dictionary.
The
use of the terms, it said, was based on data showing they were among the most
frequently used in tandem with 'perempuan'.
"As
for the social picture that emerges from the presentation of information in the
dictionary not being ideal, that is another discussion," it said in a
statement posted on its website.
The
response perplexes University of Indonesia linguist Nazarudin, who says
Indonesian language data from 2013 collected by Leipzig University shows other
phrases, such as women's empowerment or women's rights, were far more
frequently used.
"The
question is, what kind of data did they have?" he asked, "How can it
be so negative?"
A
Google search shows there are 98 million entries for 'hak perempuan' meaning
women's rights compared to just 481,000 entries for perempuan jalang, the word
for 'slut'.
Badan
Bahasa told Reuters that in addition to the Leipzig data, it also referred to
the Malay Concordance Project, a corpus of classical Malay texts.
Ika
says she is hopeful of change.
"I
am not saying I want it all to be changed into positive words," she said,
"No. But I want objectivity and real conversations."
https://www.hindustantimes.com/lifestyle/art-culture/artist-works-to-change-indonesia-s-misogynistic-dictionary-entry-for-woman-101615443439076.html
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Women
Once Enslaved by ISIS Are Reunited With Their Children
By
Jane Arraf
March
12, 2021
FAYSH
KHABUR BORDER CROSSING, Iraq — The nine young mothers rushed into the spartan
offices of a Syrian border post, looking for the sons and daughters taken from
them two years ago, children they thought they would never see again.
The
bewildered children, dressed in new puffy jackets from the orphanage they had
come from, were mostly too young to remember their mothers. They started to cry
as the sobbing women grabbed and kissed them and then led them away from the
orphanage workers who were the only caregivers they knew.
“I
was so happy, but it was a shock for both of us,” said one mother, who said she
had been dreaming of seeing her daughter again for nearly two years. “She is
not used to me yet.”
The
girl was now 2 and a half.
The
secret handoff on the Syrian-Iraqi border last week was so far the only reunion
of Yazidi women from Iraq and the children they had while sexually enslaved by
their Islamic State captors.
The
plight of these women, who survived almost unimaginable horrors in five years
of captivity, is one of the many tragic but least-known footnotes in the story
of the Islamic State’s conquest of large swaths of Iraq and Syria in 2014.
For
them, the story is far from over, their path forward still uncertain.
To
the traumatized Yazidi community, a small religious minority in northern Iraq,
the children are a direct link to the ISIS fighters who slaughtered thousands
of Yazidis and captured 6,000 more. Yazidi elders have said they would not
accept the children back into the community, and one said that the children
risked being killed if their mothers brought them home.
When
the young women were freed with the fall of the last piece of ISIS territory in
Syria two years ago, they faced a wrenching choice: If they wanted to return to
their families in Iraq, they had to leave their babies behind. Many were told,
incorrectly, that they would be able to visit their children.
Now
they have been forced to choose again. The women who crossed into Syria last
week had to cut ties with their parents, siblings and the villages they called
home if they wanted to rejoin their children.
“Nobody
can really understand what a huge step these women have taken, what risks they
are taking, how incredibly brave they are,” said Dr. Nemam Ghafouri, an
Iraqi-Swedish physician who was instrumental in the transfer.
About
30 more children, whose mothers were either too afraid to ask for them back or
decided not to keep them, remain in the orphanage in northeastern Syria.
It
was an agonizing choice for the women, many of whom were themselves children
when they were kidnapped by ISIS fighters. None of the women could tell their
families that they were leaving, and might not see them again, for fear of
jeopardizing the operation.
“I’ve
been crying for three days,” said one of the women who, to rejoin her
5-year-old daughter, left her elderly mother behind. “I feel like this would
kill my mother. She is a mother. She would die for me just like I would die for
my daughter. This is a very difficult situation for me.”
She
broke down in tears.
For
now, the nine women and 12 children are hiding in a safe house at an
undisclosed location in Iraq. Promised refuge in a Western country by the
reunion organizers, they are desperately hoping that other countries will take
them in. About 20 more mothers with children in the Syrian orphanage are
watching to see how they fare.
The
New York Times agreed to delay publication of the exchange until the women and
their children were safe, and is not identifying them for their protection.
A
former U.S. diplomat, Peter W. Galbraith, engineered the reunion across borders
and political party lines, coaxing help from previously indifferent
governments. Mr. Galbraith, who has close ties to Kurdish authorities in Iraq
and Syria, said he had spent more than a year trying to get approval to allow
some of the women to reclaim their children and bring them into Iraq, a mission
delayed by the pandemic.
The
orphanage is in an area of northeastern Syria that is controlled by
American-backed Kurdish-led authorities and is semiautonomous. Sinjar Province,
where the Yazidis are from, lies across the border in Iraq.
Mr.
Galbraith said an unnamed White House official had helped clear the final
obstacles with a call to a Kurdish-Syrian general who is a U.S. ally. The
National Security Council did not respond to a request for comment.
For
the women, the nightmare began when the forces of the Islamic State swept
across northern Iraq in 2014, declaring the territory an Islamic caliphate. The
terrorist group considers Yazidis pagans. When the ISIS fighters got to the
Yazidi homeland that August, they separated the men and older boys and
massacred up to 10,000 of them in what the United Nations and the Congress have
declared a genocide.
About
6,000 women and children were captured, and many were sold to ISIS fighters.
They were treated as disposable property, repeatedly raped, traded and sold at
will. About 3,000 Yazidis are still missing.
When
ISIS was driven from southeastern Syria in early 2019, most of the Yazidi women
were freed and taken with their children to halfway houses. They were told by
Yazidi elders that they could go home but that they had to leave their children
behind. Many of the children were taken to the Kurdish-run orphanage.
Some
women who were not identified as Yazidi, including some who hid their ethnicity
in order to keep their children, were taken to Al Hol, a squalid detention camp
in northeastern Syria. Despite the camp’s conditions, the woman with the
2-and-a-half-year-old pretended to be Arab so that she could stay there and
keep her child.
During
the final days of the caliphate, when American-led airstrikes were pounding
Baghuz, Syria, and she was wounded by shrapnel, she fought to keep her infant
daughter alive. She fed her flour mixed with water to keep her from starving.
She sewed baby clothes from cloth cut from her own dresses.
She
was determined to keep the child she had fought so hard to keep safe.
But
after six months, she was forced to admit that she was a Yazidi. She was then taken to the halfway house, but
refused to leave without her daughter.
Her
family begged her to return.
“My
family called and said, ‘Just come back, and you can go back and see her,’” the
woman said.
After
three months, she agreed and returned to Sinjar. But like the other women, she
was never allowed to see her child again.
The
women were not allowed to talk to their children by phone. The orphanage staff
had been texting the women photos and videos of the children, but stopped last
year after Yazidi elders asked them to.
When
the photos stopped, the women worried that something terrible had happened to
the children. Some said they wanted to kill themselves.
“I
am her mother. I have to take care of her,” said the woman with the
2-and-a-half-year-old. The girl’s father and his relatives were killed in
Syria, she said. “All she has is me. Who cares about the father?”
Yazidi
elders and religious leaders cared about the fathers.
Bringing
the children of ISIS terrorists to Sinjar “would destroy the Yazidi community,”
Baba Sheikh Ali Elyas, the top Yazidi religious authority, told The Times in an
interview this week. “It is very painful for us. The fathers of these children
killed the parents of these survivors. How can we accept them?”
In
addition, Iraqi law specifies that the child of a Muslim father is Muslim, so
the children could not be considered Yazidi. The Yazidi faith is a closed
religion that does not allow converts, even if Iraqi law allowed conversions
from Islam.
Angered
over what he sees as an international focus on a few Yazidi women when
thousands of Yazidis were still missing and more than 140,000 are languishing
in displacement camps, he said: “Yazidis are all orphans. No one is taking care
of us.”
Indeed,
six years after ISIS was driven out of the Sinjar region of northern Iraq, the
Yazidi homeland is still riddled with unexcavated mass graves and damaged and
destroyed homes.
The
children should be cared for by aid organizations in other countries, Baba
Sheikh Elyas said. If the mothers wanted to go to third countries with the
children, he said, no one would stop them.
Another
Yazidi leader, Prince Hazem Tahsin Bek, said the children would be in danger if
they returned with their mothers.
“The
families can tolerate the women, but they will not endure the children,” he
said. Asked whether that meant the children could be killed, he said that was a
possibility.
When
one of the women called her family this week to tell them she had her daughter
and hoped that the family would accept them, one of her brothers threatened her
and the child. “I hope the government will find a safe place for us,” she said.
Nadia
Murad, a Yazidi survivor, advocate and Nobel Peace laureate, has said she
believes the women should be allowed to decide whether to be reunited with
their children.
“They
didn’t have a choice when they were taken into captivity,” she told The Times.
“They didn’t have a choice in any of this, and they must get the help and
decide what they want.”
Before
the women embarked on the trip to recover their children, Mr. Galbraith told
them that third countries would take them in, a prospect that is far from
assured.
At
the safe house a few days later, the large house rang out with the shrieks and
laughter of small children, all under age 6. Some of the mothers watched them
worriedly, still afraid of what might happen to them.
Several
women said they hoped they would be able to be relocated to a third country
together.
Most,
but not all of the children, were beginning to bond with their mothers.
The
mother of the 5-year-old said she was still struggling to get the girl to warm
up to her. The girl had cried in terror at being taken away from the orphanage.
But the woman said she was determined to make a new life for them.
“No
one can make us live far from each other anymore,” she said.
Suddenly
the woman with the 2-and-a-half-year-old shrieked.
“She
said, ‘Mama’!” the woman exclaimed. She leaned down to the little girl dressed
in pink and urged her to say it again.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/12/world/middleeast/yazidi-isis-slaves-children.html
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Turkey
detains 13 for ‘insulting’ Erdogan on Women’s Day
March
11, 2021
ANKARA:
Thirteen people who allegedly insulted Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
during a Women’s Day march have been detained, officials and news reports said
Thursday.
Denouncing
violence against women in Turkey where over 400 women were killed in 2020,
thousands of protesters had marched along a street in central Istanbul on
Monday. Unlike previous years when police broke up similar demonstrations, the
march ended peacefully.
Istanbul
governor’s office said that police inspected videos of the demonstration and on
Wednesday detained 13 people — including a minor — who participated in the
protest. The group had chanted “slogans” but did not elaborate.
The
Cumhuriyet newspaper and other media said the suspects were detained for
questioning over slogans deemed to be insulting to Erdogan.
Insulting
the president is a crime in Turkey, punishable by up to four years in prison.
Thousands of people, including journalists, politicians, actors and
schoolchildren, have been prosecuted for alleged insults to Erdogan.
Despite
Erdogan’s pledge last week to enact human rights reforms, including on freedom
of speech, the detention were carried out.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1823781/middle-east
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In
Pakistan, Women Politicians Struggle For Nominations To Men’s Seats
Mar
11, 2021
After
the Senate Election, held on March 3, PTI’s Faisal Javed Khan tweeted about
alleged horse-trading on the men’s seat. His tweet got attention, not because
of the accusations but because people pointed out that there is no men’s seat.
He called the general seat that.
He
deleted the tweeted, but according to Sarah Khan, an assistant professor of
Political Science at Yale University, Khan just said the quiet part out loud.
Sarah
Khan discussed her chapter from Pakistan’s Political Parties: Surviving between
Dictatorship and Democracy at a webinar organised by LUMS. The book is an
extensive examination of Pakistan’s evolution from dictatorships to democracy
and the dynamics of political parties within the way society functions. The
webinar featured authors Dr. Mariam Mufti, Dr. Asad Liaqat and was moderated by
Dr Umair Javed.
Umair
said it is important to study political parties because they:
Help
structure political world for aspiring politicians and citizens
Represent
interests
Play
key role in policy formation and governance issues
Influence
political inclusion
Sarah
expounded on the role of women in Pakistan’s electoral politics. Her chapter in
Pakistan’s Political Parties discusses the systematic marginalisation of women
in politics, drawing on different sources of administrative data and surveys,
as well as the quality and health of democracy and why half of the population
is excluded from electoral contest and competition.
“It
will provide an organising framework helpful for scholars and policy-makers to
think about the various channels and how they interact to perpetuate this
exclusion,” said Sarah. “I’ll highlight the role of parties, institutions,
voters and families.”
She
also explained the rule of two paths towards women’s representation: quotas or
reserved seats and dynastic connections.
Persisting
gender gaps in voting turnout
“My
past work has focused on persisting gender gaps in voting turnout in Pakistan
over the course of multiple elections,” she said.
Sarah,
along with Dr Ali Cheema, Dr Shandnana Khan Mohmand and Dr Asad Liaqat,
conducted a survey involving 2,500 households in Lahore prior to the 2018
general elections. About 90% of respondents agreed that it is appropriate for
women to cast vote. But when it comes to discussing politics in homes, 70% men
and 80% women think it is inappropriate. Women standing for elections or
contributing to them as party workers was endorsed by only 35% men and 60%
women, thinking it is an inappropriate act to engage in.
“We
can say there’s relative agreement that it’s acceptable and even important for
women to vote, but less acceptable for them to have open an independent opinion
about who to vote for or to stand as candidate or party workers.”
In
increasingly competitive elections, parties need women’s votes, but they have
little to no incentive to nominate women as candidates or to recruit them in
party networks as workers. Across parties that draw support from different
social groups with different ideological commitments, there is one remarkable
similarity: proportion of women that parties nominate to general seats for
provincial and national assemblies. In 2018, women accounted for 5% to 7% of
any given party’s candidate pool, and this 5% was a requirement instituted in
the 2017 Election Act for the first time.
Parties’
increasing reliance in electables
“Women
are risky bet for political parties,” said Sarah. “They are not perceived as
electables, which makes them risky and that’s also where voters enter the
picture. A nationally representative survey shows more than 70% Pakistanis
think men make better leaders than women. This risk is exacerbated in a
first-past-the-post and winner-take-all electoral systems.
“Comparisons
show that women are more likely to be nominated and elected in a democracy with
proportional rather than majoritarian representation,” Sarah said. Even within
majoritarian system of representation, this exclusion is exacerbated by high
levels of competition. Increased competitiveness is a feature that contributes
to women’s marginalisation. The more competitive an election, the riskier it is
for political parties to run with a candidate with an uncertainty about their
electability.
Quota
system and dynastic connections
“The
persisting solution to this systematic under-representation for women has been
quotas,” Sarah said. Pakistan’s quotas may correct women’s under-representation
by adding on seats in the assemblies where women are indirectly elected in
proportion to seats directly won by parties in general elections, but for
years, women’s rights activists and groups have been pointing out how this
design deprives women of connections to a constituency and that it fails to
achieve the ultimate goal of quotas. “They should be redundant,” Sarah
remarked.
The
design also betrays the unwillingness to see the problem as just one of women’s
under-representation rather than of men’s over-representation in a democratic
body. If this problem is framed as men’s over-representation, the solution
would be to reserve a proportion of general seats or a rule for parties to
allocate equal ticket for men and women candidates. Sarah mentioned a sitting
senator (Faisal Javed Khan) who referred to a general senate seat from
Islamabad as the “men’s seat”.
“I
don’t want to single him out because he just said the quiet part out loud,” she
remarked.
Various
authors in the book have referred to the prevalence of dynastic candidates in
Pakistan’s political landscape.
“I
want to highlight the dynastic linkages provide an advantage,” Sarah said.
In
2008, more than one-third of men contesting male candidates for national and
provincial assemblies were those who had political family connections. For
women candidates, this proportion was 70%. This has only magnified those who
are elected because such connections provide an electoral advantage to winning,
Sarah said, adding that the dynastic label is often used to discredit women who
come into power. She also raised the question why these dynastic and familial
connections are necessary for women’s entry into politics than they are for
men.
https://www.samaa.tv/culture/2021/03/in-pakistan-women-politicians-struggle-for-nominations-to-mens-seats/
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