Roma, Ashkalic and Egyptian women in politics: beyond quotas

Gender equality, and empowering women to do so, is not only human and developing rights everywhere. Strengthening women and a host of other mechanisms for achieving gender equality are necessary for inclusive, equal and sustainable development, and therefore of fundamental importance to society's socioeconomic welfare. The political participation of women is key to these goals, and political parties are among the most important institutions for promoting and developing such participation.

During these two decades of free and democratic elections, however, how many women of the Egyptian, Roma and Ashkali have managed to enjoy this right?

The constitution provides equal participation of women and men, while the Law for General Elections in the Republic of Kosovo envisions respect for the minimum quota to protect gender equality in the lists of candidates for deputies of the Republic of Kosovo. More specifically, Article 27.1 of this law requires that youOn the list of candidates of each political subject at least 30 %) are males, and at least 30% are women.

Unfortunately, this quota has not brought any notable improvement in representing the women of these communities in decision-making positions. Political parties representing these communities have not shown enough willingness to support women in building capacities to obtain and maintain public positions at any level of government. Nor have they been interested in drawing more women from their communities, whether on election lists or through programs for leadership or similar dedicated to the political empowerment of women.

Representatives

During the past year and this year, the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian organisations undertaken an assessment of women's participation in politics in local and central elections under the women's empowerment programme.

The assessment is based on findings collected through research in the field of women and girls who are active in political life, those that have been part of politics and are gone, and political parties from among the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian communities.

The focus of this study was on identifying challenges and gaps in the participation of women candidates, the number of women of these communities in decision-making positions, their appointment by political parties for decision-making positions within them, the role of women in election campaigns, and financial support equal to men for that purpose.

This research has found a range of barriers preventing the involvement of Roma women, Egyptian ties to political life. These barriers are related to institutional, party, and social factors. Women are not qualified to compete as candidates for leadership positions, so they have to work on it more than men.

Being unable is one of the answers women receive treatment are given positions that are guaranteed based on citizens' votes. Another barrier is that the women of these communities are not given equal support as the male candidates. This cannot help achieve a meaningful participation of women in politics, as it requires the construction of candidate women's capacities and given more space within political parties in campaigns and not only.

Women of these marginalised communities who manage to become part of political life face institutional and social barriers. This study has identified ten such main barriers:

1. Political power (no electorate/votes to increase the decision-making force within parties, and are part of the electoral lists just to meet the legally required nonsense);
2. The culture and traditions of the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian communities (prejudications of the type “a woman must stay home and care for her husband, children, parents, maintain the morality and honor of family”, etc. );
3. discrimination, offensive language in daily politics, threats and multiple blackmail;
4. Lack of trust among electorates they have a voice to protect their civic interests;
5. The lack of self-confidence to address citizens during election campaigns;
6. Marriages and leaving parties;
7. Evacuation from parties (after avocation and lobbies that political parties cause these women to become empowered, they leave the parties for personal reasons or because they get a long-term work contract);
8. Lack of political stability ( frequent elections and unstable governments are among the factors affecting women from decision-making positions);
9. Rejecting positions as political advisers of the prime minister, ministers and deputy ministers in various ministries, as guaranteed by Kosovo's laws, given the vote taken (at this point there is a contradiction in interpretation by women and leaders of political parties);
10. The contracts on the work (political agreements offering contracts for six months, and most often those women remain unemployed after six months.

These findings and arguments for political empowerment of Roma, Ashkalic and Egyptian women must serve as a work guide for us as a society in our efforts to achieve the empowerment of women in politics. Larger in scale, gender equality benefits society in general, since it promotes diversity and creativity, as well as an open, transparent democracy where every voice can be heard and every citizen has equal rights to fulfill its potential.

Promoting inclusion, as well as ensuring that political parties achieve considerable progress in including as many women, are necessary.

The author of the writing is Floride Kuqaji official for the empowering of women in the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptians.