Eva Michálková
Category: Gender policy 
2014-10-29
The only country in the world, where there are more women in politics than men, is the Rwanda. One of the reasons why women are represented in Rwandan Parliament by 56 %, are gender quotas. However, many other countries resist to implementation of the gender quotas and thus increase gender equality.
The Czech Republic is among the resisting countries. According to the state of economy, the Czech Republic belongs to 8 % of world’s richest countries. However, according to the Global Gender Gap Report released by World Economic Forum, the Czech Republic occupies 83th position out of 136 countries in the world. One of the reasons for this weak position is also lack of women in politics. There are only 17.65 % of women in the Czech government and only 19.5 % of women in the Chamber of Deputies. Furthermore, the Czech Republic was never even led by female president.
Gender quotas promise to improve this situation. Quotas consist of several conditions for political parties and they are included in the draft to amendment to Election Law. There should be at least 30 % of women among political candidates. Woman would have to be represented in each triad of candidates in candidate list and also would have to figure in the first or second place in the list of candidates.
However, those conditions and quotas in general are under the discussion nowadays. Opinions about gender quotas in the Czech public varies. Many people also among politicians connect gender quotas with many myths and misunderstandings.
The most common opinion is that due to gender quotas, there would be incompetent women in the politics. Of course, this is not true. Women are equally competent and clever as men. This can be proved by the fact that that 60 % of absolvents of Universities in the Czech Republic are women. Women are active in every other professions and they are successful. There is no reason to think that women in politics would not be successful. Actually, the problem is that they are not given a chance to prove it. Women wanting to be involved in politics have to face many stereotypes and barriers.
That is connected with other myth. Many people say that if women were interested in politics enough, they would be able to get there even without quotas. In fact the barriers based on stereotypes prevent women in getting involved into politics. Women are still perceived as those who should take care of home and children. So they either don’t have time to be the part of non-formal groups, which are very important for politics or if they have a free time then they are not invited because of these stereotypes. Therefore, the reason for the lack of women in politics is not that they aren’t active enough, but rather that these barriers prevent them to get involved.
We can see that the stereotypes about women are not just blocking them to get involved in the politics, but also affect the discussion about gender quotas. Let us see now what would be the contribution if gender quota would come into force. First, equal representation of both sexes in politics will reflect the reality, because there are 50 % of women as well as 50 % of men in population. And as the politics influence every part of our life it is quite fair to have also women there. Women and men both have different life experience and priorities and therefore it is highly important to involved both these experiences into politics and let both men and women influence the future of society.
Other surveys say that teams conducted both from men and women works effectively and are more innovative, comparing those conducted only from one sex. Also the government with larger representation of women is likely to avoid the corruption.
In conclusion, gender quotas do not only ensure that there will be enough women in politics, but in general they guard the gender balance. So also female-dominated government will be possible if the quotas are implemented. This should be the last positive argument for adoption of the amendment to the Election Law and gender quotas within. Because gender equality and balance is essential for democracy and good governance.
Eva Michálková recent graduate of bachelor studies of International Social and Humanitarian Work, works at Women’s Information Centre as a EVS volunteer. She comes from the Czech Republic, and her interests are topics of gender empowerment and women’s issues, IDPs and refugees and development cooperation.
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