women in politics

Women in politics.



Lesley Abdela has been making the case for having quotas of women M.P.'s to right the imbalance of the sexes in Parliament. It is a good case. Published on the Guardian Comment is Free service, it has attracted nearly 100 replies. A large number were against having quotas and Lesley Abdela has answered all of them. She has worked for years on bringing gender equality to many emerging governments in the world, including Afghanistan, and travelled to the most difficult and dangerous places for the United Nations. She points out that many of these countries, regarded as underdeveloped, actually now have a much better record than Britain for including women in their governments.

And of course she is right. At one time, she admits, she was herself doubtful about whether quotas were the right course to take, but now she knows it works.

When Petra Kelly was leader of the successful Green movement in West Germany, her emphasis on feminism was, she always maintained, her first priority. To attend a Green conference was a revelation. Every woman speaker was followed by a male speaker, every male by a woman, and this was regarded as an absolutely unchangeable rule. So was the one that said the top jobs in the Greens had to be shared equally between men and women. But when they finally won seats in the Bundestag, the German Parliament, it was difficult to maintain this. The Bundestag was not going to accept the idea of rotating male and female speakers.

But it has to come. Anyone who doubts this should just switch on their TV news after the latest round of world meetings - the G8, the Anglican Synod arguing about whether to allow women bishops, and the village elders in Afghanistan arguing about how to spend the Western subsidies for their villages ( surely women might have some different ideas about where that money should go.) In all those pictures of the gatherings of leaders, there is scarcely a female face to be seen. They may be half of the world's ;population, but they don't get a half share in the decision-making which affects everyone's lives. If that situation was reversed, might we see fewer wars, the abolition of nuclear weapons, the end of starvation and disease in Africa, and, at last, homes and water supplies for all? We shall never know until we try. It's time to brush aside male protests, forget about upsetting them and go for the justice the world has long been waiting for.