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Topic Discussion III
Participation in
Democratic Decision-Making:
The Vital Voices of Women, Civil Society and
Pluralism
Room 5
(21 of 22 pages)
And I think that that's something -- I think that's part of the democratic learning
process, the process by which NGO has learned to defend themselves collectively against governments that often
have a natural tendency to try and shut them down, close them up or co-op them or what have you. And I would suggest,
as most of you know, this emerging democracy conference was dedicated to the memory of one Yemeni journalist, Oblizea
Sokloff (ph). And I think that in the press sector, the journalism sector, to some extent the nurturing of this
collective response approach can be traced to Dr. Oblizea. He is a person who helped to teach his fellow journalists
that they have mutual self-interests and they really did begin to act collectively as a means of self-protection.
And I think this can be applied to the women's sector, it can be applied to labor. I mean, to some extent the government
has been able to maintain it's independence of society by playing off, you know, one group of works against another
group of works, one sector of the press against another sector of the press, one sector of -- and across the board.
So I'd stop at that, except my other suggestion was one that was taken up by the two previous speakers and that
is the notion of -- now I've forgotten the notion. And again, from my experience, as a monitor in the 1997 election,
there was a [inaudible] particularly with the ruling party or the major, the GPC, about the idea of, oh, you know,
we're going nominate -- ten percent of the candidates are going to be women. Well, it turned out that instead of
nominating ten percent of the candidates women, I think there ended up by being like 17 women that ran for parliament
and...
Speaker: [inaudible]
Bob Burrowes: ....socially nominated, because all the parties realized, if we nominate a woman, we're going
to lose. Because if the GPC nominates a woman or offers for the purposes of giving that seat to the Isla party,
because the men will -- that woman will lose. So one possible answer might be, okay, ten percent of the seats are
going to be -- this is affirmative action, ten percent of the seats are going to be assigned to women or even a
higher percentage, and therefore the parties would be competing on a level field. You know, you nominate your best
woman, your best women and let them compete.
Chair: I'm sorry, I just want to thank you and I wonder if I could just make a couple of comments before
leaving the chair. The comments that you make about women and whether they act for women when they get elected,
the one thing about some of the mature democracies, we have experienced all the same things and we still have challenges
and problems.
But one of the things from my own observations, if I can just add a personal comment, because I was the first woman
to do a number of things in my own society, when I became the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada,
which is an extremely important position in my country, it makes the criminal law for the entire country, I appointed
the federal judiciary and seven of my predecessors had gone on to be Prime Minister, when I was elected, I described
myself as a feminist and there was an audible intake of breath across the second largest country in the world,
but they survived, because I was -- I mean, I was not a one issue Minister and I had decided I had not worked as
hard as I had to get where I was to abandon the members of my gender.
But I was able to do that because other women had gone before and what often happens is when the first woman enters
situations where they have not be present before, they are not there in sufficient numbers often to pursue to agenda
that they want to pursue, because they are still functioning in a male environment. And whether it's the first
women partners in a law firm, the first women in a legislative body, they often find it very difficult and that
is why critical mass is important.
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