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Topic Discussion III
Participation in
Democratic Decision-Making:
The Vital Voices of Women, Civil Society and
Pluralism
Room 2
(15 of 21 pages)
In order to involved women in the political life of Yemen, women are involved
in certain political parties, but with limited numbers. The Yemeni women assist in elections and they cast vote
to men because of the pressure that is exercised by her brother or her father, or her husband. Of course she has
to cast her vote for the man that is chosen by any of her relatives, male relatives. As for the involvement of
women and executive, we do not have any under secretary nor secretary. And we only have the women reaching post
of non-working under secretary or as under secretary without portfolio with no active undertaking of any such position,
but rather an honorary degree or position.
As for the judiciary, we have the remains of judges from the pre-unification era in southern governance. And up
to now, no new judges, women judges have been appointed and here I would like to point out a problem of which we
suffer as women, which is the carte (ph), which is the drug which is used by men here. The hashish, which is, called
Carte (ph) in Yemen. They take their Carte (ph) and go and make decisions in the councils while women are absent
from these councils. This is indeed a problem and excuse me for taking up so long of your time.
Pauline Sukhai: Thank you for allowing me to make a contribution, Madame. I am Mrs. Pauline Sukhai from
Guyana. A Member of Parliament and head of the National Commission on Women. I hope I don't take long, I don't
intend to, but I don't want you also to take what I'm telling you as a perfect case. In my country, the President
of my country is a woman and women over the last decade have been taking up quite a number of strategic and important
positions. In the economic and productive sectors, women are all there. I can tell you that in University, there
are more women than men in terms of students. That is the educational field. In the legal field there is 90 percent
of female students graduating and the men are the lesser amount today. In the medical field it is the same thing.
However, the picture I'm telling you now is that there have been some strides where women are concerned, but nothing
is perfect because all of them breaking that ceiling in some sectors. We have not been able to hold the decision-making
levels not many. You would want to say that our President is a female, and that is the most important, however
that is not enough for women.
For us what we have found is that in the work force, despite there is a large section of women, they do not hold
position in the trade union decision making levels. When there's a strike, all the women are out there, but in
negotiations and in the talks and resumption talks, and the men who are the leaders of the union, are the ones
who do all the talking and the decision making for the entire team.
It may look as though our situation is not as bad as what we have heard here. But at the same time what we have
found is that what may have been necessary for some countries where political parties put up list of candidates,
to improve the participation of women, I think that political parties who have not been doing like in our case,
we have been orienting women from the time they get into the party. That is we have a party school which orients
both male and female as the civic teaching, the local government system, what happens at the parliament level and
so on. So there is an early orientation of the female. With the new government, what we have found also is that
they have tried to put in some institutional system to facilitate women's participation, or fully participation
of decision-making levels and in the political arena. That is we have embarked on the establishment of women's
leadership institute.
There have been national policy on the women, which has been taken to parliament to facilitate the recognition
of the role of women in our country. There has also been the establishment of the commission, which I now had.
It is a very recent commission and it has been making recommendations to the minister who is responsible for women,
and to government on issues that are indirectly affecting women. So we have seen that there is a movement and important
thing for us is that any government in an emerging democracy should focus on facilitating the process of participation.
That is making the opportunities available. Giving them the access. Promoting their education both at the academic
level and at the political education so that they can effectively participate in government. Because that is where
a lot of sensitive issues decided upon very regularly, and women are not there. We only have 17 percent of women
who are in the parliament and for us, that is still too few.
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