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Topic Discussion III
Participation in
Democratic Decision-Making:
The Vital Voices of Women, Civil Society and
Pluralism
Room 4
(19 of 20 pages)
Now, I will give the floor to our speakers for them to comment on the many issues
that were brought up, so please allow us a few minutes for our speakers, whoever would like to comment, to please
do so. I thank you.
Speaker: This time I'm going to speak in Arabic so that I won't be misunderstood, especially by our two
Arab colleagues. I do agree with you that the issue of women has made great strides when it comes to gender equality
in the recent past, but what really concerns me is that when you talk about women, you always think that we are
attacking some political parties or some governments. In fact, I'm trying to be very objective when I talk about
women in general, whether they are members of certain parties or they are working as civil servants, or they working
with NGOs, whatever. Our main objective is to see the role of women in a democratic society, in a society which
believes in gender equality and we should try to have such a society. I do know all the problems facing women and
men while we are passing through this transitional period because it is a transitional period even for men, so
we should not try to understand things differently. It's true that we all have problems, men and women, but women
even more so. Why do women lag behind in the development process? Men are not better off than women, in fact, but
women are even worse than men in this respect. I cannot compare myself with any political system. I have to aspire
to an ideal situation at the beginning. We should have a different approach from the last 37 years and now we have
to rectify the situation.
Another point is religion. It is a very complicated issue. We do have so many problems related to the situation
of the participation of women in public life. In some Islamic societies, they claim that women can't go out of
their houses. In other societies we can have women as MPs, as in Pakistan, where we have a woman as a Prime Minister
and in accepting women into decision-making positions and in their participation in parliament. Those are two Islamic
societies, so we should try to understand religion as it is. I have learned a lot from my family when it comes
to Islam and what are the real meanings and the real understanding of Islam. When we talk about women as if we
are talking about women's liberation of all traditions, as if we are attacking Islam or religion. This is not true
at all. Islam is the religion of brotherhood, the religion of equality, a religion of justice - anything else would
go contrary to Islam. I am not trying to criticize any religion, but I'm trying to say that all political parties
in Yemen now are accepting the participation of women, but still they could have clear cut policies. There were
always contradictions between what they preach and what they practice at certain times. This has nothing to do
with religion or with the understanding of religion. It is from the inherited traditions. We have so many Islamic
societies who wanted to prove themselves and it has happened in so many Islamic societies. I do agree with our
Moroccan colleague, that even the civil law, we can talk about any civil law within Islamic societies without any
reaction, but with the same law if we talk about it in other societies, then people start to talk about them as
the basic inheritance, of marriage, of divorce. This is not true. We have to try to understand religion as it is
and not as we want it. We should not try to politicize religion to agree with out interests.
The reform party in Yemen elected seven women after it was said at the beginning in the same party, that women
cannot be in leading posts, so it could make this transition very slowly and very wisely, and that was a great
success story for the party itself. Women in Yemen now are qualified to occupy leading posts and to be in decision
making positions, so there should be the political will and the need to change our channels and to modernize them.
I cannot for instance adhere to the word for word interpretation of the Koran and then in other terms try to interpret
religion differently. I should think that in the third millennium we are going to face small problems when it comes
to religion and we have to be very firm and very understanding, but I would think that the third millennium would
be the millennium for women,.
Chair: Thank you. I could not summarize the points better than her. Now our colleague from Mozambique, would
you please take the floor.
Mme. Teresinha da Silva: I will be very brief. I agree with my colleague from Yemen. On many issues, you
can compare it with the African situation. Agreed or not, we live in a patriarchal society and our struggle is
to balance the power relation. We don't want to marginalize men, but to equalize the power relations. This is why
I think it is very important because we, as women, have been despoiled by colonialism, by our tradition and by
men as well because we, everyone, men and women, we were socialized as the feminine identify, the masculine identity,
so we have some framework to compare. This is why some participants are saying that women many times won't accept
leadership, they don't want to get these positions, because many times they were educated in a framework where
they aren't able to overlap this framework.
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