Address by Dr. Anamah Tan, UN CEDAW Committee Member and President ICW-CIF, at the International Convention for Youth Leaders 2006, Raffles Girls Secondary School, 23rd November 2006.

Empowering the Female Leader

– Women in Politics, in Public Life

Let me first congratulate the Principal, Teachers and the Youth Leaders of Raffles Girls’ Secondary School for your initiative in organising this first International Convention for Youth Leaders, and involving not only youth leaders from Singapore but also from around the region. I hope that this initiative will not be one-off and there will be some follow-up. Perhaps, our youth leaders from abroad can inspire their respective countries to continue this programme.

  1. Introduction

Today, I am going to hone in on the subject of women in political power. I hope that this will give you some understanding of the dynamics that can work for and against women in the political arena. And at the end of today’s talk, I hope that you, the young female leaders before me now, will take on the mantle of political leadership in your countries in the future - as Members of Parliament, as full Ministers or even as Prime Ministers.

Some of our student delegations here hail from countries that already have national targets for increasing women’s participation in politics and public life, and they are Australia, Thailand and Vietnam. So, those of you on home ground have a good opportunity here today, during the conference, to learn from our guests about such national targets and how, in other respects, women in other countries strive to achieve equal participation in decision-making.

I shall now begin with some good news. The past 10 years have seen the fastest growth of women parliamentarians, compared to previous decades. This is according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, or IPU for short. IPU is an international organisation of national Parliaments and was established in 1889. In Singapore, after the General Elections in May this year, we ended up with a record percentage of women in Parliament, 21.2%, that is 18 seats out of 85 – 17 of whom are elected women MPs and one is a non-constituency woman MP. We had the largest slate of women candidates contesting, with 22 candidates in all. During a CEDAW Committee session in January this year, I learnt that Australia too is enjoying a record-high of women representatives at the national, state and local levels. Australia, a country Singapore looks to often for good practices, has 24.7% women representation in the House of Representatives and 35.5% in the Senate.

Now, for some perspective: if the numbers of women parliamentarians around the world grow at current rates, it will not be until 2025 that the world achieves a 30 percent average of women in Parliaments, and it will not be until 2040 that gender equal representation can be achieved[1].

And what is this figure of 30 percent? This target of achieving 30 percent women representatives in a national Parliament has been agreed by Governments as the ‘critical mass’ of women needed in Parliament to ensure that women parliamentarians are not marginalised. This agreement can be found in a document called the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. This international document was adopted by 189 countries at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995.

Going back to our statistics: The report card from IPU’s October 2006 statistics shows the current world average of women parliamentarians at 16.6 percent. This is definitely an improvement compared to 1975, when women accounted for 10.9 percent of MPs worldwide. But this little progress is not good enough. And in Singapore, we can certainly do much more to bring to reality at least the critical mass of 30 percent women representation in Parliament.

  1. Do women really need to be involved in politics?

Currently, Singapore women are not getting any special treatment. In other words, there are no affirmative action policies in favour of women. This is because of the government’s policy of meritocracy. Gender equality is not seen as a hot issue here either. So far, this has not hurt our women’s interest too much, and our women here are doing relatively well – I emphasise that this is all in relative terms. And, of course, this does not mean that gender discrimination is totally absent in Singapore.

We still have much to achieve in this city state. For instance, we have yet to achieve the UN-designated 30% ‘critical mass’ of women in Parliament. Nor have we reached this percentage in Boardrooms and at all levels of decision-making.

In Singapore, if we pay attention to our parliamentary debates and media reports, we will find that the improved conditions for women here came about because our women stepped up to the plate and got deeply involved in public life issues, including political decision-making.

And THIS IS HOW IT SHOULD BE. Because the decisions in those domains of politics and public life determine the normative rules by which every woman and girl lives her life, whether it is in the form of normative culture, guidelines or hard law.

As you know, I am a CEDAW committee member. How many of you know about CEDAW? CEDAW stands for the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. It is considered the international women’s bill of rightsand isone of the seven core international human rights treaties. Each of these human rights treaties has established a committee of experts to monitor implementation of the treaty provisions by its State parties. Article 21 of the CEDAW Convention empowers the CEDAW Committee to make general recommendations, and one that is relevant to my point at this juncture is General Recommendation No. 23. It says that “policies developed and decisions made by men alone reflect only part of human experience and potential. The just and effective organisation of society demands the inclusion and participation of all its members”.

In Singapore, it is because of the persuasive advocacy of our women politicians and women NGOs such as the Singapore Council of Women’s Organisations, or SCWO for short, and conjoined support of some male politicians, that we got (i) the cap on female medical students lifted in 2003, (ii) equal citizenship privileges to foreign-born children of female Singaporeans in 2004, (iii) equalisation of medical benefits for men and women in the civil service in 2005, and (iv) more favourable pro-family measures for working mothers in recent years. It has been acknowledged in Parliament that our women MPs have been advocating mindset changes – “in the home, the workplace, and society at large.” This, our women NGOs have been strenuously doing conjointly, in order to create that critical groundswell.

Even in Singapore’s very early nation-building days - in the late 1950s and early 1960s - when women’s issues were not perceived to be on PAP’s political agenda, there were a few great women leaders such as former PAP MP, the late Madam Chan Choy Siong, and NGO-activist, the late Mrs. Shirin Fozdar who greatly influenced a considerable change in mindsets among some heavily chauvinistic PAP male leaders. This led to the enactment of the Women’s Charter in 1961 to improve the status of women in Singapore. In those days – pre-1961 - polygamy was rife in Singapore and serious social problems resulted. The problem left many widows, or women who were abandoned or divorced, without means to support themselves and their children. The Women’s Charter abolished polygamy and gave women in Singapore much greater security in a marriage.

It is fair to conclude that there is a positive correlation between women’s involvement in political and public life and the increasing pro-women results in Singapore’s Parliament. Issues taking the spotlight in Parliament have become less male-centric and more inclusive of the whole society. Aside from some championed issues I had mentioned earlier, these broader concerns have included: (i) the need for employers to adopt work-life balance measures, an issue which is relevant to both sexes and to addressing the country’s talent shortage; (ii) the need to help housewives enter the workforce for the first time and to help women who were formerly working to return to the workforce; (iii) the need to have more women MPs; and (iv) the housing needs of singles.

Let us take one other country example: In India, studies in panchayats – the Indian word for districts – have shown that the presence of women has changed local politics. It was reported in the UN Secretary-General’s Report on ‘Equal Participation of Women and Men in Decision-Making Processes at All Levels’ that women have made the panchayats more responsive to community demands for infrastructure, housing, schools and health. The report stated that “women have improved implementation of various Government programmes and their presence has made women citizens more likely to take advantage of State services and demand their rights.”

  1. Hurdles to Women’s Participation in Politics

Now, allow me to bring to your notice the hurdles to women’s participation in politics.

To some extent, we can attribute women’s low participation rate in politics to women making choices, choosing not to forgo time with their family, or to women simply being diffident about entering the rough and tumble of politics. But going by what is described in State parties’ country reports and NGO Shadow reports to the CEDAW Committee, it is very clear that discriminatory stereotyping norms are still the main stumbling block to women participating in any significant numbers in decision-making bodies, be it in the public realm or in the private sector.

There are many factors stacked against women’s entry and success in political decision-making. The main problem is that women’s capacities are still shaped by both men and women’s gender-bias patriarchal perspective of what women can do and how they should operate. When women have a foot in the door, their roles are usually defined outside the more critical mainstream functions, and are usually engaged on a more ad hoc or specific-need basis. Some countries such as New Zealand buck the trend. New Zealanders have women for their Prime Minister, Chief Justice and Speaker of the House of Representatives, as well as six women Ministers holding heavy-duty portfolios usually held by men, such as Minister of State Services, Police. And up to August this year, their Governor-General was a woman - Dame Sylvia Cartwright.

Here is a rundown of some factors that inhibit women’s participation in significant political decision-making capacities:

(i)the lack of confidence by men, and even by women, in women’s abilities;

(ii)related to the first factor is the fact that family members often do not encourage women to participate in politics because society puts more confidence in men’s leadership;

(iii)then there are the constraints women face resulting from stereotyped division of labour;

(iv)in some places, women’s roles and abilities are not accepted, even by other women. They may also become objects of envy among their female colleagues, and thus, may not be given credit for their capabilities;

(v)threats of violence - in some countries, women experience violence when they become politically active;

(vi) yet another factor is the lack of influential social networks and lack of capital for use in campaigning;

(vii) then there is always the block from the “Old Boys network” phenomenon, which could isolate and disempower the women in power.

Thankfully, adverse factors such as threats of violence do not apply in Singapore. But how relevant are the other factors in Singapore? Please be reminded that the factors I mentioned do not form an exhaustive list.

I would like to share with all of you an observation made by one of our women MPs, our well-respected Mrs. Lim Hwee Hua, who holds the Minister of State for Transport and Finance portfolio. She is the MP for Aljunied GRC, chairperson of the PAP Women’s Wing, as well as wife and mother of three children. She is also the first woman to be appointed Deputy Speaker of Parliament, holding the post from 2002 to 2004;Ms. Indranee Rajah holds the current Deputy Speaker position. When interviewed for an article in Republic Polytechnic’s campus newsletter[2], Mrs. Lim shared her observation that some of the barriers and problems faced by women in Singapore are self imposed. She was quoted as saying, “When given half a chance, men would seize it. Women could be given more than one chance and they still wouldn’t take it.”

When our Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong was DPM back in 2003, he made an interesting but not surprising comment during a meeting of the Women Integration Network Council, which is the women’s grouping of the People’s Association. He said: “I think that for quite a long time to come it will continue to be harder to recruit women than men into politics. It is not so easy for a married woman to cope with the demands of being an MP, plus her professional career, plus her responsibilities as a wife and mother.” [3]

He added: “All else being equal, the task is still probably harder for the women than for the men. If they are too soft-spoken they may not be able to lead and mobilise their grassroots leaders. Yet if they are too assertive, their constituents may not accept their leadership, because this does not gel with the traditional image of women in the minds of many Singaporeans. Rightly or wrongly, this is still the attitude of significant segments of our population, women as well as men.”

These are all very telling remarks, don’t you think? And you can be assured that they reflect societal attitudes in virtually all parts of the world.

  1. What Can We Do?

So, what can we do to correct this imbalance in the political arena?

In Singapore, we could take up the gauntlet thrown by Mrs. Lim Hwee Hua and our Prime Minister. Mrs. Lim had urged our women not to undermine their own abilities but to rise up to the challenge of contributing to the country. Two years ago, in 2004, women actually got a strong signal from the very top; Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong publicly urged more women to step forward to take part in the local political scene, and he said that he was particularly happy to have more women in his team.

Girls, the man has spoken! Build the ground now as you are doing - the same goes for all our young female leaders from overseas - and don’t shy away from politics when your time comes.

Now, the question is, with progressive comments surfacing and more women in Singapore’s Parliament, do we still need a little push to speed things up a bit? Do we need affirmative action such as gender quotas in Parliaments or in the election processes?

The CEDAW Committee strongly advocates temporary special measures to address all the cumulative exclusionary factors from time in memorial, and Governments, including Singapore’s, need to consider very seriously the use of special measures such as temporary affirmative action to bring women to the same starting point as men.

Singapore leaders have put on record their objection to the idea of affirmative action for women in politics, preferring instead to rely on political will to enhance women’s participation. But PM Lee Hsien Loong has acknowledged the problem himself. I repeat the quote I mentioned earlier: “All else being equal, the task is still probably harder for the women than for the men. If they are too soft-spoken they may not be able to lead and mobilise their grassroots leaders. Yet if they are too assertive, their constituents may not accept their leadership, because this does not gel with the traditional image of women in the minds of many Singaporeans. Rightly or wrongly, this is still the attitude of significant segments of our population, women as well as men.”

V. Jumpstarting Equality with Gender Quotas

You may ask: How does all this talk of affirmative action concern you? Girls, you are the future generation of potential women leaders. You may achieve influence that will allow you to set agendas. So you need to be aware of the tools we can use to reverse patriarchal value systems that have resulted in women playing catch-up in politics and big-time boardroom decision-making.

Let us first explore how common or accepted the use of electoral quotas has become. Electoral quotas may be entrenched legally in national Constitutions or in other legislative enactments. They may also be used voluntarily by political parties and instituted in their party constitutions or guidelines.

According to data from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) and StockholmUniversity, 14 countries are using constitutional quotas. This has resulted in an average of 22.1% women representation[4]. As for electoral law quota regulations for national parliaments, 38 countries have used it, producing an average of 18.9% women representation in Parliaments.

In the Republic of Korea, the Political Parties Act requires political parties to have women comprising more than 50 per cent of their candidate lists, for both City Council and National Assembly elections. The rank-order rules used is the zipping system[5]. This means that every second candidate must be a female in order of the ranking of candidates in the list. I understand that for the city council elections at least, if a political party does not keep this rule, its candidate registration will be invalid[6].