Women gain ground in parliamentary election in Jordan
Women’s rights campaigners in Jordan believe the country is slowly
moving towards more progressive political representation after female MPs won
20 of 130 seats in parliamentary elections on Tuesday, compared with 18 out of
150 in the previous parliament.
The growing relevance of women in Jordanian
politics, evident in campaign posters clustered at roundabouts and lining
roadsides countrywide in the buildup to polling, was reflected in a contest
that featured 252 female candidates, the highest number to date.
“You could feel the change,” said Layla Naffa,
director of programmes at the Arab Women Organisation, an NGO that fought for
the introduction of a women’s quota in 2003.Naffa attributed the shift partly
to the replacement of the controversial “one-person, one-vote” system with
proportional representation, as a result of which women have become “an asset”,
she said.
Under the new electroal law, passed last year,
Jordan has been divided into 23 districts. Citizens select from competing lists
in their constituency and vote for individual candidates from the same ticket.
There is a minimum quota of 15 female members of parliament, at least one from
each governorate.
The changes, designed to strengthen political
parties and discourage a tradition of voting based on tribal allegiance rather
than policy platforms, benefited female candidates on several levels, said Dr
Amer Bani Amer, director of Al-Hayat Center, a civil society group that
monitors elections through its RASED programme.
“For the first time, we had a large number of
female candidates, [with] men and women running together in partnership,” said
Amer.
Women appeared in all but six of the 226 party
lists, including those of Islamist groups. The increased number of female
candidates was accompanied by a vital shift in the perception of women. In the
buildup to the election, coalitions anxious to tap into the female vote
scrambled to incorporate a woman on their lists. Several all-male groups,
slower to recognise the increased advantage of aligning with women, returned
after the first day of registration to add a female face.
“It’s a sign of growing acceptance among the
public,” said Asma Khader, a former minister in Jordan’s government and
chairwoman of the Sisterhood is Global Institute (Sigi), which monitored the
election from a gender perspective. “People are now ready to see women’s names
and photographs on political campaign posters around the country.”
There were still six lists on which the image
of the female candidate was conspicuously absent – replaced by a picture of
flowers or animals in deference to conservative sensitivities.
Elsewhere, a more progressive stance was
epitomised by two national lists composed solely of women. “I wanted to make
the point that women can match men in politics; that we have a vital role to
play in determining this country’s future,” said Dr Noor Zaza, who formed a
three-woman list in the country’s capital, Amman.
The strong performance of high-profile female
MPs in the previous parliament has contributed to a belief in “women’s ability
to do good” and effect change, said Naffa. While some female MPs have simply
been “mouthpieces” for the tribes they represent, a few, such as Wafa Bani
Mustafa, have taken up pressing causes, including the campaign to overturn the
notorious Article 308 of the Penal Code, which grants rapists clemency if they
marry their victims.