Ukraine’s elected officials are not representative of the population. The problem is rooted in the top-down, pseudo-democratic institutions that produce a lame democracy at key decision-making levels.
The issue is particularly acute in parliament, where 92 percent of deputies are male. The situation is only likely to get worse in the next election if action isn’t taken now to create more gender balance.
Ukrainian women constitute 53 percent of the population. They are united in hundreds of women’s organizations. They are represented in higher numbers of elected office at the village level, yet they make up only 8 percent of members of parliament. In the last decade, the rate of women’s participation globally has grown, while Ukraine’s situation has remained the same and is now slipping backward.
Our government is making very little progress on their commitment to achieve 30 percent representation of women enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination. Ukraine can never hope to be more like the European Union without the full participation of women. No wonder that gender-related issues come last in the list of political priorities.
In 2012, the next parliamentary election will be organized under a 50/50 election system, meaning half of the members of parliament will be elected by closed party lists and half by single mandate majority, where parties can openly compete for each other in certain districts.
The latter would deteriorate women’s representation, reducing the number of women in the Rada to 6 percent, according to analysis conducted by the National Democratic Institute in Ukraine, a nongovernmental organization.
Because of the dire situation for women, Ukrainian women’s nongovernmental organizations took their 15-years plus experience in building gender capacity at the grassroots level and addressed the president with a request to veto the law on elections of people’s deputies of Ukraine.
The sad reality is that the new election law lacks any provisions aimed at raising women’s representation at the national level, contrary to Ukraine’s international obligations.
While the new election law awaits President Viktor Yanukovych’s signature, it is unlikely to be rejected just because there is no remedy for women’s equality – at least based on the president’s and Prime Minister Mykola Azarov’s public statements about women having no role in the reform efforts.
Where do we turn to now? Political parties and candidates must now take up the mantle.
Political parties need to realize that women are a benefit to the ticket. The most progressive parties understand this. Ignoring nearly two-thirds of voters who are women is a pathway to politics as usual for Ukraine.
To be competitive in this highly divisive political environment parties must embrace new ways of reaching out to and speaking with women on issues relevant to their everyday lives.
Recent polling conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology shows that only 53 percent of voters are likely to participate in the parliamentary election, and that no party, including the ruling party, is attracting more than 25 percent support among voters.
To engage citizens in the next election parties must engage women as voters and as candidates to spur a new way of thinking and new solutions for the problems we face. Only a vigorous promulgation policy can be a way out of this deadlock.
Women’s organizations need to do their part too. We need to develop an action plan to support women candidates in the forthcoming election. The action plan starts from the development of a political campaign agenda, which is gender-related of course, and finishes with the assistance at the electoral commissions as candidate representatives.
The issue that is still unanswered is whether any of the incumbent women MPs are ready to stand for the right of women to hold higher office and fight to expand their base in parliament, not weaken it. The official formation of a Women’s Caucus this week in the Rada is a good sign of the growing interest of women MPs to fight for their rights and the rights of the majority of Ukrainians.
The most successful social movements across the world to raise the value of women through gender equality in politics have all benefited greatly by the solidarity of women. Around the world, women politicians are often perceived as more honest and more responsive than their male counterparts.
In a study of 31 democratic countries, the presence of women in legislatures is positively coordinated with enhanced perceptions of government legitimacy among both men and women. There is evidence in the private sector to show that gender balance among decision makers significantly improves the outcomes of decision-making.
Unfortunately, at the moment there is no gender-profiled politician in Ukrainian’s political arena who would put grounds of her (or even his) political career on the line to fight for women’s place at the table. The only way we can move these conversations away from expert analysis is to put the choice to voters.
Most Ukrainians aren’t that interested in politics, but they are interested in having a better quality of life and a new breed of politicians who represent the interests of women, their families and their children who aren’t being well served by the status quo.
Olena Lukaniuk is head of the Institute for Democracy and Social Progress, a nongovernmental organization.
