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Topic Discussion III
Participation in
Democratic Decision-Making:
The Vital Voices of Women, Civil Society and
Pluralism
Room 4
(12 of 20 pages)
Finally, since I'm running short of time, this is a plea to ladies, that in the
course of fighting for equality for women, they should not confine this fight to the towns only. They must be able
to identify themselves with rural women, because the rural women look at the town ladies as just being snobbish
and just fighting for themselves. If they want to be successful, go into the villages, associate yourself with
a grandmother and everybody else. Thank you very much.
Chair: Thank you, sir. What an excellent note to end on, including rural women.
Speaker: I wanted to take the floor after the women here, so that I could listen first and then make my
comments. Their intervention was extremely important for me. In practice, it's not enough to have only summaries
or generalizations, but I should think that the presentation of our Yemeni colleague in general is the same as
the situation in Morocco, because we do have principles, we do have some traditions, our adherence to Islam, so
we have many common factors. When it comes to the political point of view, we evolved to that from the beginning
of our elections and the women do occupy a major post, and we do have one judge only, and in all other posts we
do have women in sufficient numbers. We have a female judge in the constitutional court.
I would like to emphasize the solutions. We are one of the emerging democracies and we do have some other people
present here who are from more deep-rooted democracies. I don't believe that the female or gender issue just has
to do with women. It is a national issue which concerns both men and women. It's true that women's issues should
be defended by women, but men should be present, not to help women, I'm not saying this at all, but it is a national
issue which concerns everybody, men and women. Men should be liberated also from the traditions and customs that
discriminate against women. In fact, I have to admit that as a fighter and a freedom fighter, I do believe that
I should shoulder responsibility. I know that this is at the expense of my wife. It doesn't mean that my wife does
not struggle or fight, but in fact this is one of the issues that we have to deal with. How do we strike the balance?
There should be economic development also under democracy and women should be involved in the economic development
and women should enjoy their economic independence so that they can take part in decision making. Again, education
is extremely important and it's taken for granted that it is very important for liberating women. In Morocco we
do have NGOs and women are represented in almost all parties, whether in the ruling parties or opposition parties.
We do have some women's associations and we do have some recommendations that might be of use to you and you might
benefit from our experience in Morocco.
In relation to gender equality and to the liberation of women, we should have some parameters. Some parties, for
instance, should be responsible for those gender issues. Within the party they should think of the presence of
women and the existence of women in the parliament and when you have this as an equal system, there should be a
woman in addition to every man, so that we can divide the list equally between men and women. We want to have a
certain percentage of women in parliament. It could be over this percentage, or lower than this percentage. For
instance, we say 20% of our seats in parliament are occupied by women. Why not have 50%? We should not really specify
a percentage, but we should have a percentage as at least a minimum. Again, we have to divide responsibilities
between men and women and they should be responsible in the leadership. In fact we do have two female ministers
and we do have four women in the parliament. This is a very modest presentation. We are suffering from a different
problem, that is a misunderstanding of the principles of Islam. We should understand Islam as it is in reality,
so that we can answer to those who don't understand anything in Islam, especially when it comes to gender equality
and to other issues concerning women. In fact, now we do have the actions of the fundamentalists who believe that
the civil issues and civil rights is something that has to do with them when it comes to divorce, marriage, or
whatever. In fact, they have to go into all the issues, economic, political, all social matters that have to do
with women. Islam is a very progressive religion and we should understand it as it is, as a progressive religion,
so women should be equal to men as they were supposed to be in Islam. Thank you very much.
Chair: Thank you. Our next speaker is from Mozambique.
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