Give Women A Fair Crack Of The Whip

 The Global Data on National Parliament in 2022 has ranked Nepal at 52nd position in terms of women representation in the legislative body. Currently, Nepal had 33.6 per cent women in the House of Representatives (HoR) that recently completed its five-year term while their number in the National Assembly stands at 37.3 per cent.

In the 2017 elections, 91 women, in 271 seats, were elected to the HoR through the First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) and Proportional Representation (PR) system. There would not have been satisfactory representation of women in the parliament had the PR election system not been in place. The number of elected women to the parliament has been significantly decreasing over the last three elections.

For example, only six (2.21 per cent) female candidates could make it to the HoR under the FPTP category although the political parties and governments were never tired of promoting inclusive political representation. Earlier in 2013 elections to the second Constitution Assembly, 4.17 per cent women leaders were elected through the direct poll which is much below the 12.5 per cent women winning the FPTP seats in the 2008 CA elections. 

So, the representation of one-third of women in the parliament was virtually impossible even if a large number of women contest polls under the FPTP category.

This satisfactory result was achieved through the PR elections in which the entire country is considered a single constituency and the political parties submit the closed list of the candidates by meeting their 33 per cent representation in the parliament.

The Election Commission elects women from the PR list until the required percentage of female representation is met while male candidates in the list get the opportunity to get elected after the former's target is met. 

Meanwhile, there are clear indications that this time the women representation will meet the same fate as only 9.4 per cent of the total candidates contesting the elections to the HoR and 8.7 per cent in the provincial assemblies are women. Of the 2,187 nominations filed by the political parties for 165 seats of the HoR under the FPTP system, only 255 are women while most of them are either from fringe political parties or are contesting the elections independently.

Big political parties have given opportunity to a small number of women leaders to contest the direct elections with CPN-UML nominating 11 women candidates, CPN-Maoist Centre eight, Janata Samajbadi Party six, Nepali Congress five, Loktantrik Samajwadi Party two and CPN-Unified Socialist only one female candidates. Likewise, of the 3,224 candidates contesting for 330 seats of provincial assemblies, 280 are women. 

The numbers are disappointing as the large political parties in the ruling coalition and opposition failed to trust women candidates and have refrained from fielding them for the direct elections to the HoR and provincial assemblies. Therefore, there is a need for the political parties to formulate a strategy to boost the participation of women in politics and enhance their capacity so that they feel confident enough to contest the FPTP elections.

At the same time, the government, EC, political parties and other stakeholders should come up with a novel idea of reducing the cost of elections for increasing representation of women and marginalised communities in politics. The local, district and provincial level committees of the political parties should also be more inclusive and bring more women onto the leadership rung. 

Editorial published in The Rising Nepal daily on 16 October 2022.