Bahraini women face uphill election struggle
Web posted at: 11/23/2006 2:5:55
Source ::: AFP
MANAMA • Although women in Bahrain fare better than in other Gulf monarchies, the 18 female hopefuls in Saturday’s parliamentary polls still face an uphill struggle to get elected.
Eight women vied for elected office for the first time in the last parliamentary elections in 2002, but none managed to clinch a seat.
This time round there will be at least one female face in the 40-seat chamber – Latifa Al Qouhoud has already become the first woman MP in the country’s history after she stood unopposed in her constituency.
Bahraini women face uphill election struggle
Web posted at: 11/23/2006 2:5:55
Source ::: AFP
MANAMA • Although women in Bahrain fare better than in other Gulf monarchies, the 18 female hopefuls in Saturday’s parliamentary polls still face an uphill struggle to get elected.
Eight women vied for elected office for the first time in the last parliamentary elections in 2002, but none managed to clinch a seat.
This time round there will be at least one female face in the 40-seat chamber – Latifa Al Qouhoud has already become the first woman MP in the country’s history after she stood unopposed in her constituency.
Otherwise, “two or three women are likely to enter parliament,” said Fatima Ali Ibrahim, one of the women candidates, who pointed to a “relative change” in voters’ attitudes.
Ibrahim said she had feared she would encounter a male chauvinist mentality, especially in conservative villages, but her contacts with the electorate had shown otherwise.
However, Ibrahim conceded that “some clerics and their statements which are hostile to women reduce our chances” of making it to parliament.
She said the female candidates’ best chance lies in “political alliances,” such as that struck by Munira Fakhrou, a Sunni member of a leftist association who enjoys the backing of the main opposition group of the Shi’ite majority in the upcoming polls, in which a total of 207 candidates are running.
Fakhrou, an academic and political activist affiliated to the National Democratic Action Association, will face Salah Ali, head of the Sunni National Islamic Tribune Association, the local chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood.
“We have solid candidates” facing “rivals who have lost credibility,” said Zahra Muradi, another female hopeful who predicted that “two or three women will be elected.”
But Muradi, a member of the Islamic Action Association, a Shi’ite grouping, complained that women were hampered by “social traditions” and that no women figured on most of the electoral lists sponsored by Shiite and Sunni groups.
Apart from Qouhoud, a Sunni, “no female candidate will make into the chamber of deputies,” said the secretary general of the Assala (Authenticity) Association, a Salafi group.
A woman’s place is not in parliament, much as it is not at the head of the army, said Ibrahim Busandal, citing “religious factors” to explain his opposition to women’s presence in parliament.
“Most people think women are not up to assuming such functions,” and it would be a bad idea to vote for “a woman who knows little more than her work and home,” he said.
Naima Marhun, a leftist candidate who sits on the political bureau of the Progressive Forum Association, argued that while “many people want to vote for women … fatwas (religious edicts) issued all over the place reduce their chances.”
“People are sensitive to the clerics’ fatwas despite their desire to support women,” she said. Bahraini women only got the vote for the first time in a 2001 referendum on turning the small Gulf archipelago into a constitutional monarchy.
The cabinet includes two women: Health Minister Nada Haffadh and Social Affairs Minister Fatima al-Blushi. A woman was named as judge for the first time in June, and four women, including a Christian, sit in an appointed 40-member consultative council.
But Bahraini women activists are still trying to push through a personal status law, which is fiercely opposed by religious leaders.
