LAHORE – South Asia Partnership (SAP) concluded its two-day national workshop on Friday, which was based on their project ‘Engendering Democratic Governance in South Asia’. The rationale behind the workshop was to stress more women participation in government to form a stronger and more diverse democracy. Several experts spoke about the issue, giving suggestions, opinions, and feedback along with interaction with other members of the workshop. Afterwards a joint declaration was formed.
Rakhshanda Naz, a United Nations researcher and activist, spoke first in connection with the parliament, election commission and political parties, and gave an overview of the current issues and challenges from the perspective of women as voters and decision makers in an operating democracy.
The challenges faced by women politicians are many. They have families that do not allow them to leave their homes, free interaction in community is thought of as almost taboo, in many cases, there is lack of education and they have to face male dominant attitudes in many areas. Besides this, many women do not even have enough education and political awareness which acts as a major hindrance in joining and functioning in politics. Often they are victims of political violence, lack of resources (from their own political parties), while they must also juggle their political responsibilities with their home and personal lives.
Perhaps the biggest issue for women in politics, it was noted in the workshop, is that parties only fill up positions of women in party offices and ranks, but do not give them the power to operate. There is an indifferent attitude towards women within the political parties themselves. Influential control over the parties itself is a major deterrent for women’s progress and in fact promotes feudal mindsets, rather than democracy. On the other hand, women politicians themselves have attempted to adopt strategies in order to promote themselves, the workshop noted. Still there are issues faced at this level. There continues to be, for instance, no effective participation of women representatives in policy and planning level. However, women have raised their voice in protection for others at national and provincial assembly level.
They have managed to use the media, though not to their best, to promote women’s issues, organised the community in different forums, as well as in election campaigns, struggled to give a lead role for women in political parties and have attempted to sensitize women on local issues for their active role in politics. Zahid Islam, also a researcher and activist, talked about the issues at local governance level. Rohit Kumar, from Nepal, addressed the matters of developing a common agenda and strategies. He said that the objective for this was to provide guidelines for civil society to act upon collectively and work to promote women in democratic governance in order to create gender sensitivity. At the end of the two days, the workshop drafted conclusions and recommendations, which help promote gender sensitivity and responsiveness in governance.
In today’s day and age, South Asia must become a stronger bloc, it was said, and that to achieve this, women must be strengthened as they form over 50 percent of the population in Pakistan and similarly so in other south Asian countries. Other guests included ANP parliamentarian Bushra Gohar, SAP Pakistan Executive Director Muhammad Tehseen and Mehergarh Director Dr Fozia Saeed.
