WUNRN
LIBYA - ELECTIONS GIVE WOMEN 17% OF
NATIONAL CONGRESS
Call for Women to Also Be Part of
New Constitution Drafting in Libya
By Dominique
Soguel - WeNews Correspondent - July 18, 2012
Women's representation in
A woman shows her inked finger after voting in
By United Nations Development Programme on Flickr under
CC 2.0
TRIPOLI,
Libya (WOMENSENEWS)--Thirty-three women have been elected to serve in Libya's
General National Congress in the first free elections since a NATO-backed
revolt last year toppled the regime and the death of Moammar Gadhafi.
The last time Libyans went to the polls was almost half a
century ago under the late-monarch King Idriss, who Gadhafi toppled in a
bloodless coup in 1969. The North African nation held parliamentary elections
in 1964 and then again in 1965 but parties were banned.
"This is a very good starting point: 32 women
elected with the parties and one independent," said Samira Massoud, acting
president of the Libyan Women's
The tally gives women 17 percent representation in the 200-member transitional authority.
Massoud said that unlike sisters in neighboring
In a surprise,
"Libyan society is afraid of the Muslim Brotherhood
and the Salafists, this why they all gravitated to Jibril," said Massoud,
adding that Libyan women fear being forced to wear the niqab, which covers the
face, as is required of women in Saudi Arabia.
Those elected in
the July 7 polling will appoint a new government and deliver a new constitution
on the basis of a process still under debate.
Next Challenges
Libyan women's next challenge is securing a foothold in
the committee of 60 that will draft a constitution. It is unclear whether this
group will be appointed or elected.
Women benefitted in the polls from a so-called zipper
system that required parties to alternate between male and female candidates
not only within their lists but also across the top of their lists.
Female candidates were just shy of half--545 of 1,206
candidates--of those vying for seats reserved for parties. Only 85 women out of
2,501 contenders took the risk to run as individual candidates.
Keeping in mind that the starting point was zero and that
women gained less than 2 percent of seats in neighboring
"Seventeen percent is not a bad start to me,"
said Sabra Bano, director of Gender Concerns International, based
Election observers ranging from the European Union and
the United Nations to the U.S.-based
"We are starting very fast. Libyan women could not
practice politics before because there was room for only one," said
Massoud, referring to Gadhafi and his green book, or manifesto.
Massoud said a
stigma was attached to the women visible in public life under Gadhafi, because
he used them for sex rather than as a sounding board for ideas. "Women's
organizations back then were small in numbers and under his control,” she said.
High Turnout
Women made up 45 percent--1.3 million--of the registered
voters in this election and turned out in high numbers to vote. Election
commissioners provided separate polling booths for men and women.
In the run-up to elections, major parties across the
spectrum endorsed a greater role for women in the next government, a gesture
supported by a couple of U.N.-sponsored trainings for aspiring female
politicians.
The majority of seats--120 of 200--in the Congress were
reserved for independent candidates rather than parties. Only one woman out of
the solo candidates claimed a seat as a representative of the oasis town of
That figure, Bano said, was "depressingly low"
and begs the question of whether Libya would benefit from introducing a
quota-system to ensure greater gender parity in future elections, due after a
new constitution is passed.
Discontent with the participation of women in politics by
some individuals was evident in acts of vandalism that smeared out the faces of
female candidates, even though the vast majority of them appeared veiled.
All parties were obliged to include women in their lists.
A handful of the 142 political parties decided to depict their female
candidates as a silhouette rather than put up a picture.
The
majority of the elected female representatives came from the ranks of either
Jibril's National Forces Alliance or those of the Justice and Construction
Party, which was launched by