Jordan Times
Thursday, September 27, 2007

Women activists to push for doubling Lower House 6-seat quota

By Rana Husseini

AMMAN - Women activists on Wednesday said they will continue to press the government to increase the number of seats allocated for women in the Lower House of Parliament, a day after being informed by the premier that the government has no intention of doubling the quota.

“We are really disappointed because the government has closed the door in our face and rejected our recent demands,” activist Emily Naffa told The Jordan Times yesterday.

Naffa said the women’s movement sent Prime Minister Marouf Bakhit a letter requesting that the six Lower House seats allocated for women be increased to 12.

But during a meeting with leading women’s groups on Tuesday, Bakhit reiterated the government’s recent decision to maintain the current quota.

Instead, the premier called on the women’s movement to support “qualified women to run for the upcoming elections and encourage Jordanian women to vote for their peers instead of depending on the quota”, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

“We were really disappointed with the outcome of the meeting because we thought the government invited us to the meeting to inform us that it had responded positively to our demands,” Jordanian Women’s Union President Amneh Zu’bi said.

Zu’bi said the premier urged the woman’s movement to focus on nominating qualified women and concentrate on winning through direct competition, not the quota.

Both Zu’bi and Naffa said the women’s movement would not give up and will continue to urge the government to increase the number of seats.

The activists told The Jordan Times they would hold a meeting soon to decide on the new approach they plan to adopt to convince the government to accept their demands.

Last month, the Cabinet announced that parliamentary elections would be held November 20, but added that the government had no plans of revisiting the Elections Law.

Instead, the Cabinet decided to maintain the six-seat quota for women, introduced ahead of the 2003 parliamentary elections.

Currently there are 110 seats in the Lower House, including the six allocated for women.

Activists say the decision regarding the quota contradicts articles in the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which the government published in the Official Gazette in July.

CEDAW calls on all governments to allocate at least 30 per cent of decision-making and leadership positions for women.

Naffa insisted that the current quota is not fair to women in densely-populated areas and produced weak female candidates who “voted against laws favouring women”.

She said it would “only help bring inexperienced women to the Lower House and ignore districts with high populations”.

The female deputies who served in the previous government came from the governorates of Karak, Tafileh, Irbid and Zarqa. Seven women were also appointed the same year to serve in the Upper House.

Before the quota was introduced, only two women had ever served in the Lower House: Toujan Faisal, who won a Circassian seat in the 1993 elections and Nuha Maaytah, who won a seat through parliamentary by-elections in 2001.

A UNIFEM study released in March attributed women’s failure to gain parliamentary seats in larger numbers to social and political factors, including a lack of trust by Jordanian society that women are capable of working in politics.

Other obstacles included the one-person, one-vote formula, which deterred many women from running and the lack of financial resources for female candidates.

Commenting on the performance of female deputies during the 14th Parliament, the study said they had failed to use their position to vote for laws that would positively affect women’s lives.

Instead, they adopted their party’s stance, which was not in favour of voting for draft laws guaranteeing women more rights, according to the study.

Meanwhile, Petra quoted the prime minister as praising the women’s movement during Tuesday’s meeting, as well as the gains achieved under His Majesty King Abdullah’s directives.

The premier urged the women activists to build on these achievements in order to ensure “true equality for their rights, opportunities and duties”.

Bakhit pointed to the recent government decision to allocate a 20 per cent quota for women in the municipal elections “despite the fierce opposition we faced”.

s“The government believes in women’s capabilities and defended its decision to increase the quota during the municipal elections, which opened the door for over 200 women to take part in public service,” the premier said.