<B>Beijing platform for action</B>

A couple of weeks back, when launching the Empowerment Year for Women, which was due to start on the 1st July 2004, the Minister of Women’s Rights, Child Development and Family Welfare made reference to the Beijing Platform for Action which, in 1995 – one year short of a decade today – called on all governments to take measures needed to ensure women’s equal access to, and full participation in, power structures, and decision-making forums. It also required of governments that they set specific targets and implement measures to increase the number of women in politics, including through positive actions. Gender quota is one such positive action and, although controversial, is viewed by many as the most effective instrument to increase women’s political representation. Already, it is implemented in no less than 90 countries, either in local or national elections.

The Beijing Platform for Action has had deep influence on the political agenda of several governments and of political parties around the world but the region where, gender quotas, as a result thereof, have been most extensively implemented is Latin America. Between 1995 and 1997 ten Latin American countries have legislated to introduce gender quotas. Elsewhere in the world too, countries as diverse as France, Bosnia, South Africa and Uganda have recently introduced gender quotas in national elections. In Southeast Asia, the interest in gender quotas is so widespread that people have started talking of quota fever.

<B> Controversial quotas</B>

Introducing quotas, especially gender quotas, is albeit highly controversial: they are seen by some as discrimination and a violation of the principle of fairness while others consider them to be compensation for the structural barriers that prevent fair competition between men and women.

Tim Symonds who was part of a group that campaigned to increase the number of women MPs in Britain thus justifies its introduction: “historically, women have been excluded from power. They have never, in any democracy, made the breakthrough in numbers anywhere appropriate to their percentage of the population and abilities.” “This is why,” he concludes, “you need quotas for women to get into parliaments and legislatures.”

Critics, however, say candidates should be elected on merit, not according to gender. If women are any good, the reasoning goes, they will get elected anyway. To which the proponents of gender quotas reply that equal opportunities more often than not exist only on statute books whereas quotas have proved to be an efficient measure of attaining real equality, the equality of results.

Debates and discussions around gender quotas invariably bring up the question of the whys and the wherefores of female representation in parliaments and legislatures. The simple and obvious answer would be that women represent half of the population and, going by the justice argument, have the right to half of the parliamentary seats. But, women have different experiences too, biological and socially constructed, and if only for this reason, they ought to be more adequately represented. Besides, their interests are not always the same as those of men and are at times even conflicting. It would not be desirable for men to represent women ...at all times! Moreover, the importance of women politicians as role models, paving the way for other women to enter politics should not be underestimated.

<B>Different forms of quotas</B>

Today, gender quotas exist in countries where women have traditionally been excluded from politics as well as in countries with a long history of mobilisation of women into political life. In the Scandinavian countries, for exam- ple, the average level of women’s representation in Parliament is around 40 %. South Africa, one of the new democracies, where quotas had recently been introduced by the ANC, witnessed a phenomenal rise in women representation to about 30 percent.

Quotas exist in different forms and are sometimes enshrined in the Constitution of a country or established by election laws. One form of quota is the electoral gender quota system, which prescribes ‘quantitatively’ a minimum representation of men and women. In France, this quota is known as parité and in Sweden every second a woman. Prescribing a certain number or percentage, however, does not necessarily mean that women candidates are actually in a position to translate the percentage of candidates into a similar percentage of seats. They may, for example, be made to stand in constituencies known to favour male candidates and where they stand very little or no chance of being elected or, in the case of party lists, placed at the bottom of the lists of principal candidates.

However, because of placement mandates that can be applied to party lists – that is, quotas that prescribe specific placement on the lists – it is possible to have a level of women’s representation that corresponds to the percentage of the quotas.

An important factor to be considered is the hierarchical structures of political parties with highly centralised decision-making processes that constitute resistance to the demands of other groups, notably women, within the parties. Unless the political parties experience genuine internal democracy, the demand for gender equity in political representation is likely to face major obstacles no matter how much legitimacy the demand enjoys.

It has been demonstrated that Proportional Representation (PR) is the electoral system which lends itself more easily to the implementation of quotas. A distinction must, however, be made between indicative quotas, where the quota percentage is established without specifying how it is to be met and compulsory quotas which denote how the percentage is to be met by specifying the alternation or sequencing of candidates, for example that at least one of every 3 candidates must be a woman.

Reserved seats for women is another type of quota system, in which certain seats are set aside for them. This system exists in Uganda, where certain regional seats are specifically reserved for women.

<B>The Indian experience</B>

In India, where the current demand for one-third reservation for women in the State Assemblies and in the Lok Sabha is yet to be considered, the issue of gender quotas – or women’s reservations – was already the subject of debates during the course of the nationalist movement in the 1920s, writes Vasanthi Raman in her article entitled The Implementation of Quotas for Women: The Indian Experience. However, the All-India Women’s Conference (AIWC) along with the Women’s Indian Association and National Council of Women in India chose, in 1931, to endorse the declaration of the Fundamental Rights to Citizenship in India voted by the Indian National Congress which called for equality before the law, irrespective of religion, caste, creed or sex, universal adult franchise and women’s right to vote, represent and hold public office.

The question of gender quotas came up once again in the Committee on the Status of Women in India (CSWI) in 1974. Although women’s presence in the States and Central legislatures had been declining steadily after every election, the dominant opinion in the CSWI was against quotas, with the exception of two very interesting notes of dissent.

The arguments in favour of quotas (or reservations) were: (a) the difficulties women faced in gaining entry into male-dominated political parties; (b) quotas would ensure a significant women’s presence enabling them to act as a pressure group and (c) the presence of a critical mass of women would heighten the sense of responsibility among women, ensuring that their interests were adequately represented. The arguments against quotas were: (a) they would be a departure from the constitutional principle of equality; (b) women’s interests cannot be isolated from the economic, social and political interests of groups, strata and classes in the society and (c) systems of special representation for women may generate similar such demands from other groups and interests and thus threaten national integration. A consensus was, however, reached on the need for gender quotas in local bodies but they were not to be implemented until the Indian Constitution was amended in April 1993; and in 1994 and 1995, when the first round of elections to the panchayats with the new provisions were held, nearly one million women acceded to the political institutions of local self-government.

The concluding remarks of the dissenting notes to justify reservations and quotas, mentioned earlier, are worth reproducing here, since they may equally apply to our local conditions and can thus constitute the basis for more vigorous debates on the gender quota issue than we have so far witnessed: “When one applies the principle of democracy to a society characterized by tremendous inequalities, such special protections (gender quotas) are only spearheads to pierce through the barriers of inequality. An unattainable goal is as meaningless as a right that cannot be exercised. Equality of opportunities cannot be achieved in the face of tremendous disabilities and obstacles, which the social system imposes on all those sections whom traditional India treated as second or even third class citizens. Our investigations have proved that the application of the theoretical principle of equality in the context of unequal situations only intensifies inequalities, because equality in such situations merely means privileges for those who have them already and not for those who need them.”

<B>Mauritius: fair sex – unfair system</B>

In Mauritius, real debate on gender quotas is yet to take place, one reason being the dilly-dallying around the long overdue introduction in the National Assembly of amendments to the existing electoral system which, from my point of view, has outlived its usefulness. No genuine democracy can afford to have an electoral system, which, at successive elections, produces such a lopsided parliament, where the opposition’s representation is reduced to a parson’s nose. The percentage of votes obtained by a political party at an election should more or less be proportionately reflected in the number seats won by that political party. Otherwise, the electoral system cannot be said to be fair, even if elections are proclaimed to be free. The First-past-the-post/ Block-Vote system of ours is most unfair and amendments are required in order to introduce a certain amount of fairness in our electoral system. Hence, the proposal for a mixed system of Block-Vote/proportional representation, recommended by the Sachs’ Commission and endorsed by the Select Committee presided over by Hon Yvan Collendavelloo, which today meets with the approval of a large majority of our population. Partisan politics has so far prevented the institution of such a mixed system, which would have consolidated and strengthened our democratic set-up but instead we are about to be served with an extended good-loser system, which will represent nothing more than a cosmetic change. Except perhaps, if we go by the information leaked, for the provision of reserved seats for some seven women, who would be assured of crossing the threshold of Parliament. The fair sex deserves better, much better!

The record of Mauritius in the representation of women in Parliament is, except for Swaziland, the worst among SADC countries. While the percentage of women in Parliament was, in 1999, 29.8% in South Africa and 24% in the Seychelles, the percentage in Mauritius was a mere 7.6%.

“No serious attempt was being made to encourage women to stand for office or to find seats for women in constituencies where they have a good chance of success,” notes the January 2002 Sachs’ Report on Constitutional and Electoral Reform, which further adds that the system of PR lists provides a basis for incentive for the inclusion of women. Although as far back as 1997, the Heads of State of the SADC committed themselves to the achievement of at least a 30% representation of women in political and decision-making structures by the year 2005, yet the percentage of women in the Mauritian Parliament today has in fact dropped to 5.6 %, making it possibly the lowest in the whole of the SADC region. Quoting the South African experience, the Sachs’ Report contends that the adoption of PR in the Constitution made it relatively easy to achieve the minimum proportion of 33.3 %. “After the party membership through their branch representatives had voted for all the candidates on the ANC lists, so that those with the most votes were at the top and those with the least at the bottom, adjustments were made in the ranking to ensure that at least three out of every bloc of ten names on the list were those of women.”

The Report endorses the view that the major responsibility for correcting the massive gender imbalance rests with the political parties and although it does not make any firm recommendation, gives some indications of how to go about ensuring a higher representation of women in the Mauritian Parliament by proposing the following measures: (a) In each bloc of three candidates nominated in the twenty constituencies, at least one be a woman and one be a man; (b) parties be required to rank their candidates on the PR lists (of course Sachs was labouring under the delusion that, as indicated by the parties in power, then and now, the PR system it recommended was going to be approved and our Constitution amended accordingly) in such a sequence that at least every third candidate be a woman and every third a man; and (c) assuming that public funding of political parties was introduced, the allocation of funds could be made dependent in significant part on the extent to which women are put forward as candidates and women obtain seats.

It is about time women, who represent ‘half of the sky, be given the place they deserve in politics and equality of results in lieu of equal opportunity be applied to ensure proper representation of women in Parliament. Will the Ministry of Women’s rights, Child development and Family welfare spearhead a campaign with a view to reminding the government of its international and regional obligations regarding women’s representation in decision-making bodies or else instigate women of this country to stand up and be counted?

<B>Bibliography: </B>

– The Implementation of Quotas: Asian Experiences - IDEA, 2003

– The Implementation of Quotas: Latin American Experiences - IDEA, 2003

– Report of the Commission on Constitutional and Electoral Reform - Jan 2002

–Handbook of Electoral System Design - IDEA, reprinted 2002

<B>Cassam UTEEM</B>