Gender quotas deserve a rethink
By: Frida Bani-Sam
Representation of women in Pacific parliaments is the lowest in the world. Many argue that women playing a leadership role in politics is against tradition, both Christian and kastom. But all Christian customs speak of equality, and if the role of government is to protect the weakest, then surely women have a role to play. So the question is how, not if, women should play a role. Quotas are one way to achieve this.
Women’s rise to power elsewhere in the world hasn’t undermined Christian principles. And arguments concerning women’s role in kastom often ignore important traditions, including matrilineal inheritance. Avenues exist for women to gain certain rights in society, and women have a right to participate in decision making in the community. Admittedly, the practice has recently changed – with land rulings now widely perceived to be male-only domain. But what has changed before can change again.
Today, leadership in the region is widely held to be a men-only domain, and regardless of its more gender-inclusive origins, any challenge to it will encounter fierce opposition using “traditional” customary ideals as their rallying cry. With the exception of French Pacific territories, where the French parity law has enabled equal representation and in Bougainville, which currently reserves 10 seats for its women, this is exactly what is happening across the region. Margareth Tini Parua, a contestant in PNG’s 2012 national election explained it: “They say women don’t stand up in a sing-sing place and speak out on behalf of the clan or tribe, therefore women can’t stand up and speak for us in parliament and speak out on behalf.”
It’s no surprise, then, that Pacific islands are ranked the lowest in the world in terms of women’s political representation, with women holding a meager 3.65 percent of of seats. This is a far cry from number one ranked Rwanda, at 56.3 percent.
The discourse on electoral gender quotas in the Pacific is having trouble gaining traction. In response to a move for 10 reserved seats in the country’s legislature in 2014, Solomon Islands PM Gordon Darcy Lilo frankly stated his government’s preference to address this issue as a development approach, but not a rights approach.
In Papua New Guinea, a move in 2011 for 22 reserved seats in its 111 seat national assembly died in parliament. Even PNG’s three newly elected women MPs do not support the bill, threatening to withdraw from the government if the bill is reintroduced. In 2012, an attempt to amend the Samoan constitution to allow five reserved seats for women also failed. In Fiji, national women’s groups have issued a radical demand for half of all parliamentary seats to be reserved for women. How Fiji’s military government will respond to this request remains to be seen.
Quotas don’t have to be permanent. In Bougainville, special treatment in the form of reserved seats provide a short term way to immediately increase the number of women in parliament – while longer term strategies will continue to be implemented. Quotas will only be in place until the barriers blocking gender parity are removed. They will be reconsidered when the country’s constitutional review is due.
Detractors often argue that quotas are unfair and distort the democratic process – that a quota restricts freedom of choice. Many see it as an affront, granting special rights to women above and beyond those accorded to others.
Quotas, they say, tokenise women, and imply that they are undeserving. They may also limit women’s representation beyond the fixed quota level. The Bougainville case reveals that quotas can enable and also limit women’s participation. Some have argued that that although the reserved seats provision is enabling a wide acceptance of female parliamentarians, women are rarely contesting the 33 open seats, and when they do, they suffer overwhelming defeat. This suggests that Bougainville voters are not supportive of women contesting open seats, believing the quota awards them sufficient representation already.
But quota advocates contend that the active involvement of women in decision-making is essential to eliminating poverty. Now, national decisions made by parliaments often ignore women’s grievances and priorities, which often contrast starkly with mens’. Female leaders generally support policy choices that reflect communities’ preferences.
Is it necessary – or even possible – to force people to see the light? The principle of equality is a social attitude, but legislation plays a critical role in shaping this attitude. Quotas impose re-thinking and change perceptions. Consider India’s experience with quota implementation, where in every election, one third of the villages must elect a female mayor by rotation. The quota has successfully eroded the bias after just five years of experimentation: “People have a limited choice in the first election, but we observe that they become more likely to elect a woman in the following elections even when they are not constrained”
Contrary to assumptions that gender quotas distort the democratic process, they strengthen democracy by widening the pool of participants. Democracy is based not just on the premise that all people are born equal, but also the assumption that everyone recognises and respects that fact. Current prejudices against women reveal this is not the case. Quotas will level unfair psychological grounds so that what prejudice denies women in the mind, the law restores in practice.
