Pages
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
Topic Discussion III
Participation in
Democratic Decision-Making:
The Vital Voices of Women, Civil Society and
Pluralism
Room 4
(18 of 20 pages)
The Nepalese women emerged from the deep slumber of the rural dungeon since half
a century. I myself started my political career since half a century. The women's movement had always been together
with the men's movement in the democratic struggle, so they were always shoulder to shoulder with men. After the
achievement of democracy, women were left out and the only thing women got was some change in polygamy and bigamy
and child marriage. But I remember in 1953 when I started teaching, the attitude towards women and towards girls,
it was co-educational, there were about 45 boys and one girl. Until 1948 there were no girls schools in Nepal,
not a single one. So I went to the classroom and all the boys got up and went out. Only the girl was left in the
class. I taught the only girl in the class for about a week, then afterwards the boys started coming. This was
the attitude towards women and towards girls. This is not the case now. Things have changed now from the 1950's
to the 1990's. Still there is a vast difference between men and women. As you have said, the constitution says
that men and women are equal. It is a formal equality. In actual fact the reality is quite different. Still, in
our country, in the public administration, women are just 5%. In the parliament they are about 8 or 9%. I can speak
about other occupations. There are two business women handling two big hotels and there is some satisfaction in
medicine, where there are 20%.
Chair: Excuse me Madame. I'd like to know how that change happened.
Mme. Sahana Prachan: There is a women's movement. There are many women's organizations. They fought for
that, they spoke of women's rights and all those things. So these changes came, but the changes are very very few,
in comparison to men. Still, the women are far behind.
In the 1990's, women became more aware and the women's movement grew up and within this time a platform was formed.
All the women's organizations, and most of the NGOs who were working in the grass roots, combined and formed a
Women's Security Pressure Group and this group has been taking on issues like violence against women, girl trafficking,
women's property rights, and other issues. There is some change there, but in spite of all these changes, the women
are still far behind.
Thank you very much.
Chair: We'll have our final contribution to the discussion, and then we'll have our speakers.
Speaker: As the husband of the first female professor in Sunha (sp) University and probably the first graduate,
and as the first one to get her Ph.D from Sunha (ph) University, I know exactly what this means. But in fact I
don't want the matter to be a matter of a facade. It should be a real and constructive participation in our daily
lives. As politicians, I want women to be on our platforms and yet we neglect the real role of women. In Yemen,
first of all we have political pluralism and the elections which sensitize political parties to the important role
of women and I think women should take advantage of this opportunity and that female leadership in Yemen should
be deeply rooted at various levels and with all classes of society. We don't want it to be the leadership of the
elite because we don't want women to be the guardians of other women. We don't want to have this custodianship
at all.
Again, the donors who are exerting pressures, but without giving the society the impression that it comes from
a foreign side and that it goes against our traditions, then the women have benefited from the mistakes committed
by some of the political leaders. For instance, one of the political leaders said that we should not have women
in leadership and this person was defeated, because women were polarized in defending their role and their position,
so those mistakes were to the benefit of women. Also, I do believe that stereotyping in Yemen is much stronger
than anywhere else in the world and education is the only way to rectify the situation. I believe that not only
through education as we see it in our schools, but we should have innovative education programs for women, especially
if you want to attract them in rural areas. Unless women believe that this education will be of benefit to them,
they would never go to school. This is one of the basic issues and the issue of religion. Contrary to the misunderstanding
or misinterpretation of Islam, Islam does not stand in the face of the development of women. Women have to open
dialogue with enlightened religious figures and should use all mass media available to her to give the real image
of Islam and the real understanding of Islam.
I do have a number of other issues, but I will focus on one issue, and that's the role of women because again in
Yemen only urban women take control and urban women are marginalized completely. This is one of the mistakes.
Chair: Thank you. All the points were really significant and were really taken into consideration and will
appear in our final report.
|
[ Introduction ] [ Worldwide Activities ] [ What We Do ] |