Political participation: ‘Women better at handling local governments than men’

MPAs, civil society urge home-based workers to participate in upcoming elections.

LAHORE:

Local governments take care of four principal municipal issues: water management and sanitation; health and education; property supervision and solving local conflicts; overseeing expenditure of resources, Irfan Mufti of South Asia Partnership Pakistan said at a conference on Thursday. “And women are more competent to handle these matters than their male counterparts.”

Mufti was addressing women home-based workers at a conference organised by HomeNet Pakistan and UN Women. The idea was to give the workers a chance to network with women MPAs and to learn from their election experiences.

An unprecedented number of women got public office as a result of the previous local elections, Mehnaz Rafi, a political rights activist, said. Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah had stressed the importance of women’s participation in politics, she said.

Rafi said regardless of what political party they supported, it was important for them to vote, “because women understand each other’s problems best”.

Mufti urged participants of the conference to fight on general seats. He said, “Your campaign agenda should not be based on the fact that you are a woman… you don’t want sympathy vote… you should be able show people that you are the best representative for them.”

MPAs Saadia Sohail, Lubna Faisal and Faiza Malik also addressed the workers.

Sohail said the local government was the first step towards political empowerment. She said women parliamentarians always supported each other regardless of party line.

Faisal said two women had been elected in the cantonment board elections which was a great achievement.

Malik said that they were hopeful that local government elections would be held this year. “We need hardworking women at grassroots level and women home-based workers to enter mainstream politics through local government elections.”

Local Government Additional Sectary Moazzam Janjua said that it was important that home-based workers contest elections this year as it would provide them an opportunity to show their strength.

According to the Punjab Local Govt Act 2013-14, women can send applications before November 2015. Two out of six general seats are reserved for women.

Representatives of district action committees from Sialkot, Rajanpur, Faisalabad, Chiniot , Gujranwala and Muzaffargarh highlighted governance issues faced by women workers at the district level. They said women in rural communities faced extreme poverty, poor health, minimum wage and reproductive health issues. Women in rural areas are more vulnerable as they don’t have access to the market or to capacity building courses.

Anwer Hussain of ALCAP, SPO-Lahore Regional Head Salman Abid, Homenet Executive Director Ume Laila Azhar also spoke on the importance of women’s representation at all levels.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 12^th, 2015.