Why we need more women in Parliament

At the General Election held on August 5th, only 8 of the 196 directly elected MPs were women (and of the 29 National List seats, so far the SLPP has included 2 woman in its 17 seats and the SJB 1 in 7, for a grand total of 11).

Leading up to the election, the responses (from both men and women) to entreaties to vote for women were largely either

1. We shouldn’t vote for someone just because they are a woman — we should vote for suitable candidates, or
2. What results have previous women MPs achieved to justify electing more women?

The latter is a little funny because there is no necessity to demonstrate the performance of male MPs as a whole to justify the election of men (although the performance of the individual understandably matters for the re-election of that individual), but it’s still an understandable counter to the request to vote for women without any discrimination on suitability, which is the the first objection.

Note: While this article is mostly on political representation, much of it is also applicable for “minority” (women — who are an oppressed minority even though they are a numerical majority, trans, hetero, ethnic, etc) representation in boardrooms as well

Electing Women to address Women’s issues

One aspect of the rationale for electing women is that there are myriad issues that disproportionately impact women (such as impact of the burden of childcare and home-care on their opportunities for broader participation in society (politics/activism, entrepreneurship / employment, education, arts, etc) as well as their mental health (e.g. lack of time for spiritual and leisure pursuits); sexual and reproductive health and rights / family planning; domestic abuse / IPV; etc) that ought to be addressed, and while it is theoretically possible that such changes will be legislated by men, history has shown that such changes advance much faster when led by women (Helen Lewis’ Difficult Women is highly recommended reading).

But why have the past women parliamentarians not addressed these issues? It’s because we’ve mostly elected women who have been (or at least have been required to be) far too reasonable (the opposite of Lewis’ difficult), where Shaw’s quote applies at least equally (or probably better) to women:

Electing women to address women’s issues is rather like electing MPs of a particular ethnicity to represent the interests of that ethnicity… so let’s go down that rabbit hole for a bit:

When I was young and was told that we needed Muslims in parliament to represent Muslim interests (just like other communities had their representatives) I thought that was a strange way to run a country. Naive much?

I believe we can, and should, have different people representing different interests — protecting the environment, eliminating poverty, better healthcare, better infrastructure, improving justice, better access to and quality of education, conserving history, patronage of the arts, etc — all of which necessarily compete for a limited budget and sometimes also have conflicts of interest (e.g. environmental regulations impact industrial growth and employment opportunities)

However, electing representatives because “our” ethnic community is disadvantaged (or at least perceived to be, because we don’t get our “fair share” of the opportunities and benefits afforded of citizenship) is a dangerous game — because their reasonable course of action is to do just enough to show that “I am making a difference, more than competing-representative-for-your-“oppressed”-community and only I can help you” to get elected again. Re-election is the number 1 priority for a politician, and if they do too much, there is no longer a reason for people to re-elect them!

And there’s another aspect that has held them back: Sri Lanka, despite decades of democracy, struggles to rid itself of feudalism — we repeatedly vote in candidates from political dynasties (who even have the gall to claim they are not family-based). Candidates from political families have no doubt acquired a political education not afforded to the general population (and on top of that we have a president who is actively discouraging students from studying Political Science!), but that is often in reasonable politics that guarantees re-election. This is problematic regardless of the sex of the representative, but has been especially harmful for women who have been elected based on the political capital of their father or husband — how can they dismantle the patriarchy when it is the source of their power?

Electing Women to address any issue

What does it take to qualify as a suitable candidate for parliament?

Whatever you list, will boil down to either nature or nurture. As far as nature is concerned, I do not believe there is any difference due to sex, or even sexual orientation — the talent is evenly distributed across the entire population. That’s why women have succeeded in every domain for which structural barriers to their participation has been removed.

But nurture makes a difference — the reason we struggle to find “good” female candidates is because girls are rarely (except in the case of political dynasties) nurtured towards a political career of their own (at best, they might be a “good wife” for a politician), and because the burden of child and home-care (both extremely valuable social services that are sadly unpaid and unrecognized in GDP) falls mostly on their shoulders. On the one hand it makes it difficult for them to manage the demanding schedule of politics, and on the other it provokes resistance from the patriarchy because it would mean men have to take on a greater share of that work. Note that this resistance can be from men (because they find the work demeaning) as well as from women (because their identity of being a “good woman” is too vested in the traditional role of the woman).

How many potential leaders has society missed out on because they were not nurtured — because they were women, because they were sexual minorities, because they were not of the dominant race/ethnicity/religion, or because they were poor?

Marie Curie (nee Skłodowska) had to move to Paris because her native Poland didn’t allow her access to regular higher education — one of the many structural barriers women face. If she hadn’t found an opportunity in France, it’s possible that her work (which subsequently made her the only person to receive a Nobel Prize in two different disciplines) would have been eventually performed by someone else — but it would have been delayed, as would have been all the work that built upon hers.

Alan Turing’s work at Bletchley Park cracked the Nazi Enigma Code and shortened the war and saved lives. He is considered to be the father of artificial intelligence. What more might he have achieved if he had not committed suicide after being convicted for homosexuality?

Audrey Tang, the Digital Minister of Taiwan lauded for her role in tackling the pandemic, is trans. In Sri Lanka, never mind being a minister, it’s unlikely she’d even be elected.

If we want to have the best people in parliament, it is imperative that we remove the structural barriers that prevent women (and anyone who isn’t a cis-hetero man) participating in politics.

You may also be interested in my other writing on Education, Politics/Power, Ethics/Philosophy/Humanism, Parenting and “Lost in Translation”