Only four out of 34 women who ran in the People's Assembly elections managed to win seats in parliament. As Reem Leila finds out, they blame the situation not only on political parties but the failure of the National Council for Women to support them Under-representation at the Shura Council is not enough of a bane for women, it seems. In the recently concluded People's Assembly elections, only four out of 34 female nominees made it to the house. And this has as much to do with numbers fielded as with election results. Out of 444 National Democratic Party (NDP) candidates, for example, only six were women; with the Tagammu Party nominating four women out of a total of 60 candidates, the opposition may seem to be doing proportionally better, but the Wafd Party nominated only one woman. Other parties refused to put women on their lists, and the remaining number of women who ran for elections were either independent or representing the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. This is surprising in the light of the fact that women have been encouraged to participate in democratic process -- by running for elections as well as voting -- since they won suffrage rights as early as 1956. More recently their political empowerment has been publicised as a necessary side of development by political and civil institutions as well as the National Council for Women (NCW) -- contrary to what the People's Assembly elections, which ended last week, demonstrated. This plight seems to be neverending; it reflects an attitude of individual as well as a social patriarchy that seems to be fast spreading in Egypt. Noaman Gomaa, chairman of the Wafd Party, for example, explained the decision to nominate no more than one woman by describing it as an introductory test -- the result of which merely confirmed the tendency to exclude women: "Our female candidate failed, as we expected, because most women have little interest in playing a significant role in the political arena. Women are neither politically qualified nor trained, as they do not know how to run their electoral campaign or present their programme." Yet the NCW was equally blamed for failing to perform its role. According to Al-Ahram writer and (failed) Al-Tagammu nominee Amina Shafiq, in the last (2000) elections, media campaigns and financial support notwithstanding, NCW members toured villages to arrange for the issuing of identity cards for women who could not vote for lack of them. The four women who made it into parliament, in fact, won as a direct result of NCW efforts: "We don't want women to sit in the back row of the People's Assembly. We want their presence to be felt as both candidates and voters." In the 1995 elections, the NDP nominated 15 women, the Wafd five, the Islamist-oriented Labour three -- and the Nasserist party none. But the highest level of female representation in parliament was 6.6 per cent, following the 1987 elections. This was made possible by a law, later revoked by the Supreme Constitutional Court, which reserved 32 Assembly seats for women. "This year, women will be even less adequately represented than the dominant average since that time (two per cent). It was expected that women would figure highly on the candidate lists of many parties but the election battle has proven very tough given prevalent social attitudes." Intellectuals and political figures blame the NCW and political parties, especially the ruling NDP, for failing to support the cause. Al-Ahram 's senior columnist Salama Ahmed Salama thought the ruling party, which never misses a chance to expound on National Unity and women's rights, failed to set an example for other political parties as it only nominated six female candidates, thus completely ignoring the call of the NCW for greater female political participation: "Perhaps the NCW did not exercise enough pressure on the ruling NDP to include women in their nominations." In spite of the female candidates' negative results, Farkhonda Hassan, NCW secretary- general, has ironically made a positive observation: "I consider the latest elections a success for women because it was the first time that most of them ran as independents. This will enable them to fight a better fight in the next round." Hassan confirms that the council is still urging women to participate more actively in politics and, particularly, to register as voters. This, she added, would be an initial step towards their political empowerment as it attempts to disseminate "political awareness" in order to help women choose the right candidates: "The council did everything in its power to impress it on people and parties alike that greater female participation in all walks of life is crucial -- and particularly so in political matters." Though it made no explicit commitment to improving female representation in parliament, she insisted, the NCW exerted "official and unofficial" pressure of every conceivable form on political parties -- urging them to nominate at least those of their members who had received expert candidacy training in NCW courses. Like many others, Hoda Badran, head of the Alliance for Arab Women (AAW), points out that people are not yet convinced that women can be credible politicians or parliamentary representatives. The People's Assembly elections were extremely difficult due to severe competition as other independent candidates were spending much money, while the NCW failed to provide women with spiritual, let alone financial support: "What did the NCW do to change social preconceptions since its establishment in February 2000? Its political training programmes, how did they improve women's performance in the latest elections?" Theoretical training courses were hardly sufficient, she added. Mona Makram Ebeid, an independent (failed) candidate, agrees: "What does the NCW do with the financial donations it receives from the World Bank and other foreign entities to improve Egyptian women's status in the political arena?" Playwright Fatheya El-Assal, the Tagammu Party nominee -- another woman who lost -- holds the NCW directly responsible: "I defy anyone from inside or outside the council to tell me that the NCW has supported any of the female candidates either financially or morally. I did not see any one of them during my electoral campaign." Hassan's response is simple: the council received no donations from foreign entities to support female candidates in the elections. "The donations we got were to develop women's political skills and increase their political awareness. This has already been done as we established our own centre to enhance women's performance in the political arena," she explained. The NCW, she goes on, is a governmental body, directly affiliated with the president and therefore in no position to support candidates from outside the NDP, whether financially or morally. As if to underline that position, in a tour conducted by Al-Ahram Weekly among university students, all female students who knew of the NCW inquired, "What has the council done for women in general and in the latest elections more specifically?" Gihan Abdel-Hamid, one such student, says, "I thought women would achieve better results, but the council totally failed to support them, all that its leaders were saying turned out to be mere sloganeering." Hoda Ahmed, another student, mentioned that her aunt had attended a political training programme at the NCW and found it "totally impractical".
