Opinion
Half of the sky
The quota system is being misused to nominate wives, daughters and close relatives of political leadersWith women occupying the post of the President, Speaker of the House and very soon the Chief Justice, there is a kind of euphoria among women politicians and activists in Nepal at the coming of a bright future. Is it really so? Are we poised for a new change and leadership? Is the horizon of “aadhaa aakaas”, or half of the sky as they call it, widening or is it just spurious clouds? Gender and politics can be looked at from two perspectives, namely women in politics and politics in women.
Women in politics
With at least 33 percent reservation for women in state structures and bodies—including new constitutional provisions requiring that the President and Vice-President be from different genders or communities, the Speaker and Deputy Speaker be women from different parties, and that the Chairperson and Vice-Chairperson of the National Assembly be women—the opportunities for female politicians and other aspiring female candidates seem to have widened a lot in Nepal. The 33 percent reservation made in the Interim Constitution has helped to increase Nepal’s Gender Empowerment Index published by the UNDP. The index, which stood at 0.191 in 1998, has increased to 0.581 in 2006 and 0.568 in 2011. This is an impressive achievement.
In the civil service, women now constitute nearly 18 percent of the more than 81,000 civil servants in the country. A growing number of women can be seen entering the male-dominated security services. They constitute around five percent of all the officers in the army, police and armed police force. The national budget sets aside 21.75 percent of the allocations as directly gender responsive budget. There is also a provision to allocate 10 percent of the total grants to local bodies for women empowerment programmes. An estimated 781,000 women are presently participating in various women development programmes being organised in 3,636 of the around 4,000 village development committees (VDC) in Nepal.
However, the impressive changes being observed in the gender empowerment index have been dampened by slow progress in the Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI) published by the World Economic Forum. The GGGI seeks to measure the gap that exists between men and women in terms of economic participation, educational attainment, health and survival and political empowerment. Together with its four components, the graph above depicts the movement in Nepal’s GGGI from 2006-15. Among the four, political empowerment is not only at the bottom, it has also been declining from 2009 onwards. Political empowerment is the crucial factor determining women’s empowerment in Nepal.
In 2008, during the first election to the Constituent Assembly (CA), 30 out of the 359 women candidates were elected under the direct or first-past-the-post electoral system. Among them, 23 were from the Maoist camp. However, the second CA election in 2013 was a disaster for women politicians. Only 10 out of the 667 women contestants won the election. The picture is even bleaker for the Maoists. A quick analysis of how women candidates fared during the first and second CA elections based on a random sampling of 24 electoral constituencies revealed that they not only lost, they lost badly. The number of votes secured by losing women candidates were way far behind the winning male candidate. During the first CA election, the number of votes that the losing women candidates received amounted to 15 percent of the winners’ votes. During the second CA election, the figure dropped to 12 percent.
The implication is that women cannot survive in Nepal’s cut-throat electoral competition. The political machinations and corruption are all dominated by males. Rather than contesting in the hills and mountains, more women can be found contesting in easily accessible Tarai and urban areas. Rather than directly contesting male-dominated elections, women politics has been reduced to the world of quotas and reservation. And this is what leads us to the subject of politics in women.
Politics in women
The introduction of the proportional representation (PR) system has saved the presence of women in Parliament. Currently, there are 176 women Members of Parliament (MP). Among them, 162 women were nominated under the PR system. With male politicians in central command, the nomination of women MPs has become a playground for male politics. The misogynist Nepali media has degraded nominated women MPs by calling them “bed warmers, mistresses, wives and lovers”. The quota system is being used, or rather misused, to nominate wives, daughters and close relatives of political leaders. The women leaders who have been nominated under such a perverted system can hardly be expected to look at interests other than those of their mentors. In the quest for quantity in women’s representation, we have lost quality.
The UCPN (Maoist), which stunned the world by recruiting female fighters into their army during their decade-long rebellion (1996-2006), too has spoiled women leaders. They have nominated women leaders from among their close relatives or in compensation for a lost husband, son or brother in the war. The Maoists’ poor showing is reflected in their electoral defeat. In the 2008 election, 27 out of the 42 women contestants emerged winners. In 2013, only one out of the 26 female candidates won the election. The number of nominated women MPs from the Maoist camp dropped from 50 to 27.
There is also a tendency to treat women leaders as dispensable or disposable items. The trouncing that women politicians received in the election also helps to substantiate the fact that, in order to meet the statutory quota requirements, women are asked to contest in those constituencies where electoral defeat is 100 percent certain. Compared to men, women are politically more active, and their roles more suited at the grassroots. It was formerly believed that the quota system in local elections had opened the way for 40,000 women leaders to participate in local level politics. However, women have not benefitted because local elections have not been held since 1999. No local level elections means a great setback for women in politics.
There is another caveat in women’s politics. A survey done by UNIFEM in 2009 revealed that, as with national politics, the sphere of women’s politics is also dominated overwhelmingly by Brahmin and Chhetri women drawn from elite families. The survey concluded that it would be a very long and arduous process to accept women’s existence in politics in a patriarchal society like ours.
Manandhar is a freelance consultant