Afghanistan ranks in the world’s top twenty countries for numbers of women in parliament.1 In the Wolesi Jirga (Lower House) alone, women hold sixty-eight seats, comprising 27 percent of the plenary—partly due to a reserved seat system established during the Bonn Process.2 This is a considerable milestone in the struggle for equal opportunities in Afghanistan. Nevertheless, although political space has been created for women in parliament, the question remains as to how this space is being used.
The benefits and shortcomings of reserving seats for women in legislative bodies are continually debated. The positive effects of this kind of affirmative action include marking the first step toward achieving some form of equity. Preferential treatment for certain social groups can compensate for their past exclusion, contributing to a process of righting historical injustices.3 Affirmative action can also be used to overcome barriers that would otherwise prevent women or other marginalized groups from participating in political institutions,4 and in fast-tracking their political presence, it can quickly redress quantitative social imbalances within these institutions. Further supporting this stance is the assertion that a critical mass of 30 percent of women in parliament is needed in order for women’s political influence to be effective.5 However, although this idea implies that influence can be quantitatively determined, it does not allow for factors that obscure the link between women’s access to politics and their capacity to influence decision making, let alone the link between women’s presence and their ability or willingness to promote their gender interests.
Central to the debate on affirmative action is the recent shift, in terms of political representation in general, from a “politics of ideas” to a “politics of presence.”6 Demands for women’s (and other minority groups’) greater political participation have replaced the concept of a representation through ideas, political platforms, and corresponding policy.7 Indeed, this appears to be the case in Afghanistan’s Wolesi Jirga, in which considerable emphasis has been placed on the question of which social groups are represented and where very few platform-based alliances exist that cut across social groups. A further problem with the “politics of presence” discourse is the frequent assumption that all members of a minority group share identical interests.8 This assumption proves inaccurate when considering the women of the Wolesi Jirga, who, contrary to the often romanticized portrayals in Western media of the solidarity of a persecuted group,9 are far from united as a homogenous bloc but are instead divided across ethnic, class, linguistic, political, and regional lines.10
In 2007, the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU) conducted a study of the ways in which women’s gender interests were being represented in the Wolesi Jirga.11 Through interviews with male and female members of parliament, AREU found that affirmative action to fast-track women into the legislature had affected their perceived legitimacy in office. AREU also found that women’s gender interests have not been substantively represented in parliament since its first term began in 2005. This short summary of updated findings of the 2007 study details key challenges concerning women’s presence in the Afghan parliament, the representation of “women in general,” and the nature of women’s collective agency and influence during its first term (2005–2010).
Women’s political participation is not a new phenomenon in Afghanistan. The third Afghan constitution, drafted under King Zahir Shah in 1964, gave women the right to vote and to enter parliament as elected candidates for the first time. Although women’s subsequent relationship with political participation has been turbulent, to say the least, their potential contribution to national-level politics has been recognized at different points over the last forty-five years.12 However, the effects of the exclusion of women from political space during the Mujahedin and Taliban eras are still apparent—primarily in terms of prevailing conservative perceptions that would limit women’s role in the public sphere.
Nevertheless, the government of Afghanistan has taken steps to redress the inequalities imposed on women during previous regimes. Indeed, following the Bonn Agreement (December 2001), and subsequent global conferences such as Beijing +10,13 the government made a series of commitments to Afghan women including the establishment in 2002 of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, the signing of the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women in 2003, and the constitutional introduction in January 2004 of sixty-eight reserved seats for female candidates in legislative elections.14 In May 2008, President Hamid Karzai ratified the National Action Plan for the Women of Afghanistan. Gender equity is also a key cross-cutting theme in Afghanistan’s National Development Strategy, finalized in 2008, with gender mainstreaming identified as the preferred mechanism to achieve this goal.15
The international community has played a key role in encouraging these steps,16 to the extent that the national ownership of and political will to promote the gender equity agenda in Afghanistan can be called into question in some cases. With a policy framework that promotes women’s gender interests at least on paper, key constitutional and other legal milestones can be seen as the foundations for the promotion of women’s gender interests. However, considerably more needs to be done in order to ensure that these provisions are internalized, implemented, and mainstreamed throughout legislative processes.17
Women’s presence in parliament is perceived in a number of ways by MPs themselves. On the one hand, the majority of male and female parliamentarians interviewed between 2007 and 2009 considered women’s presence to be a positive step forward for the Afghan legislature.18 On the other hand, their sizeable presence is often equated, by men and women parliamentarians alike, with the achievement of “women’s rights.” As one male MP stated, “There are twenty-eight percent of seats for women in the Wolesi Jirga, and this assures us that they have their rights.”19 This approach could lead to the conclusion that, if women’s rights have already been “accomplished,” there is no need to further promote women’s gender interests in parliament.
Another issue concerns the attitudes of some (primarily male) MPs toward women’s political presence and the way in which they acquired parliamentary seats. Indeed, the reserved seats system appears to have generated a degree of resentment from male MPs, who, even in 2007 (eighteen months after the elections) were still vocal about the disparity between male and female candidates’ final vote counts. Other male MPs voiced the need to “take things slowly” with women’s rights and their presence and influence in parliament, so as not to incite conservative reactions. This is perhaps understandable given Afghanistan’s history, in which a series of these reactions to relatively liberal policies can be identified.20
Finally, and significantly, the reserved seats system was largely misinterpreted in the 2005 parliamentary elections. While the constitution clearly states that at least two seats on average must be reserved for women,21 the minimum of sixty-eight reserved seats became a glass ceiling above and beyond which successful female candidates were not allocated parliamentary space. Almost 30 percent of women won their seats in their own right and not as a result of the reserved seats system,22 and yet these seats were included in the sixty-eight finally given to women after the elections. Moreover, in parliamentary discourse, the notion of “women’s seats” and “men’s seats” is commonly referred to, as if there were seats reserved for men also. In this way, general seats—in theory open for any candidate to contest—have become men’s seats in public perceptions. This is emphasized by the way in which many MPs (male and female) who were interviewed talked about sixty-eight seats being “not enough” for women. This common perception could significantly hinder women’s chances of winning more seats in future elections.
Having discussed challenges concerning women’s presence in parliament, it is pertinent to look briefly at who they represent therein. Officially, MPs are elected by provincial constituency, and thus in theory they represent their province. However, through interviews with MPs it became clear that many had mobilized village- or district-level voter support networks, and that these more localized areas were instead considered the focus of MPs’ representational responsibilities. Some female MPs in interviews expressed the desire to support women of a particular ethnicity from their own district, for example.23 This is not unsurprising, of course, but it is particularly significant when compared with the notion of representing “women in general”—a task often expected of women in legislative bodies. Furthermore, MPs for the most part represent the elite strata of society and have limited connections with “ordinary” women and men. This is true in many legislative bodies worldwide, but in Afghanistan it is emphasized by the fact that many parliamentarians have returned recently from overseas and have not experienced the direct effects of conflict. Female MPs often claim to be assisting ordinary women in responding to their practical needs, providing blankets or establishing clinics, for example. In describing these activities, however, they often present themselves as benevolent benefactors undertaking charitable tasks, which emphasizes the class divide and calls into question MPs’ ability to understand, let alone represent, ordinary women’s interests.
In spite of the nuances within and between different women’s gender interests, these interests are nonetheless collective at a basic level, and as such they are most successfully represented by issues-based blocs as opposed to individuals. However, neither solid issues-based blocs nor collective political platforms have been strongly consolidated in parliament to date. Parties exist, and some exert considerable influence in parliament, but they are far from “institutionalized” in the conventional sense; they are not formally recognized as plenary blocs and their membership remains fluid and informal.24 Moreover, for the most part they do not hold solid, issues-based platforms that would categorize voting patterns in parliament; these are instead largely determined by factors such as ethnicity and personality. A “parliamentary groups” system has been instigated in parliament to compensate for this lack of formal parties, but the formation of these groups has been highly problematic. Unfortunately, a situation in which more than 240 voices contend for audition in plenary sessions is still in place. As such, potential spaces for the substantive representation of women’s gender interests have not emerged.
One recent example of the lack of an issues-based bloc promoting these interests is that of the parliamentary reaction to the conservative and highly controversial Shi’a Family Law, which prompted international outcry in April 2009 due to its apparent denial of women’s conjugal rights, among other issues. This law had been discussed in plenary sessions on a number of occasions throughout 2008–2009, but, according to one female MP, not in its entirety: details concerning sexual relations, for example, had been “missed out” of the debate.25 Various changes have been made to the law since its initial appearance in parliament, and by mid-2010 a new but still controversial version had been published by the Ministry of Justice. During the legislative process, a number of women MPs, who are not usually noted for their conservative leanings, took a public stance in favor of the law.26
Women’s gender interests are clearly brought into question in this law, and thus it is necessary to explore why female parliamentarians did not emerge as a unified bloc to protect them. Specific factors include the tensions that exist between individual women, and especially between those who have significant connections to international agencies and donors (usually due to proficiency in English) and those who do not. These rifts have constituted significant barriers to the consolidation of collective gender interests over the last five years. It is not suggested here that women MPs should necessarily form a close-knit group by virtue of their gender, however, the power struggles between some individuals nevertheless impede productive cooperation when interests do coincide.
Another factor is women’s allegiance to diverse parties or influential individuals, which can be prioritized over and above any commitment to promoting women’s gender interests. In some cases, women were put forward by parties during the 2005 elections as a means to gain “easy” seats, and their decision making has been subsequently under the direct control of these parties; but in other cases, women MPs have used their party connections to their strategic advantage. Examples of this include women having accepted funding from parties for their electoral campaigns but once in office refusing to align with these parties’ interests and simultaneously refusing to pay back the funds they initially received.27 Moreover, while a number of parties have women’s wings, they lack the institutionalization, the formal connections to the legislature, and essentially the political will to provide platforms for the effective promotion of women’s gender interests. Ethnicity also plays a significant role in determining male and female MPs’ allegiances. With women parliamentarians, it is often the case that ethnic and qaum-based identities are prioritized over and above gender identities,28 undercutting any sense of unity between women over issues that otherwise might invoke solidarity.
Lastly, echoing the concerns of some of their male colleagues, during interviews a number of female MPs voiced a concern to keep the peace and a disinclination to disrupt any sense of “national unity,” however superficial, attained in parliament. This was particularly the case regarding controversial issues, about which one female MP described the need to “speak gently”: “We should use the mechanism of speaking gently and not against the men, so that they don’t get angry with us; this will help to change their minds slowly.”
Although this kind of caution is evidently strategic, and perhaps wise, one can nonetheless wonder when and over what issues female MPs will feel comfortable standing openly and speaking ungently to promote their gender interests. Furthermore, it is necessary to ask why, and why now, women and men are so concerned not to upset conservative sensibilities in parliament.
In responding to these questions, it is evident that security is an essential, underlying consideration affecting all aspects of the functioning of Afghanistan’s legislative processes. In a climate of decreasing security levels in which MPs are targets of both anti-state activists and those who would oppose their views inside parliament, it is not surprising that there is a considerable reluctance to promote women’s gender interests when association with these interests can prove quite frankly dangerous. Moreover, because sentiments against international intervention in Afghanistan appear to be increasing, particularly as a result of apparently accumulating civilian casualties attributed to international military forces, any sign of support for “Western values” and what is perceived as “foreign interference with Islamic principles” is highly political and can involve considerable risk.29
In sum, it is clear that women’s presence in Afghanistan’s legislature has not led to the collective representation of women in general or the promotion of women’s gender interests to date. A number of factors pose key challenges: attitudes toward the legitimacy of their very presence in parliament, assumptions concerning who they represent therein, and the existence of cross-cutting identities and allegiances that fragment efforts to mobilize as a collective bloc. Underpinning these factors is the essential consideration of decreasing security, which is rendering the concept of free speech essentially meaningless in 2010. Technical measures to improve the functioning of parliament are necessary and may provide the mechanisms needed to encourage bloc formation and the representation of collective interests. However, until MPs feel secure enough to broach and vote on controversial subjects such as women’s gender interests—with the confidence that their opinions will not generate violent opposition—the chance of these interests being promoted substantively will remain elusive.
1. Andrew Reynolds, Lucy Jones, and Andrew Wilder, A Guide to Parliamentary Elections in Afghanistan (Kabul: AREU, 2005), 10. http://www.areu.org.af.
2. Officially, the system used in Afghanistan is a reserved seats system. This differs from statutory quotas in that it marks a constitutional provision to allocate a certain number of seats to women legislators, rather than regulating the specific proportion of male and female candidates by all parties seeking parliamentary representation. Pippa Norris, Opening the Door: Women Leaders and Constitution Building in Iraq and Afghanistan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government, 2006).
3. Deborah Smith, Finding Power: Gender and Women’s Political Participation in Rural Rajasthan, India (PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science, 2005), 39.
4. Drude Dahlerup, “Using Quotas to Increase Women’s Political Representation: New Trends in Gender Quotas,” in Women in Parliament, ed. Julie Ballington and Azza Karam (Stockholm: International IDEA, 2005).
5. Thirty percent was put forward as the critical mass target for women in decision-making posts as prescribed in the United Nations-facilitated Beijing Platform for Action, 1995. IPU, Women in Parliament in 2006: The Year in Perspective (Geneva: IPU, 2007), http://www.ipu.org. However, approaches toward the critical-mass idea have shifted in the last decade, with the UN now emphasizing that it will take more than increased numbers of women in parliament to overcome barriers to gender equity (UNRISD “Women in Public Office: A Rising Tide,” in Gender Equality: Striving for Justice in an Unequal World (Geneva: UNRISD, 2005), http://www.unrisd.org/80256B3C005BCCF9/httpNetITFramePDF?ReadForm&parentunid=12F166540C09D163C1256FB1004C0156&
parentdoctype=documentauxiliarypage&netit-path=80256B3C005BCCF9/(httpAuxPages)/12F166540C09D163C1256FB1004C0156/$file/GE_11Chap9.pdf.
6. Anne Phillips, The Politics of Presence: The Political Representation of Gender, Ethnicity and Race (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).
7. Ibid.
8. Phillips critiques this assumption in ibid., 24.
9. Such is the perspective given in Natasha Walter, “We Are Just Watching Things Get Worse,” The Guardian, November 28, 2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,,1958707,00.html.
10. The concept of multiple identities is important here, as people’s interests are often determined by the particular aspects of the identities they choose to prioritize at a given time.
11. Anna Wordsworth, “A Matter of Interests: Gender and the Politics of Presence in Afghanistan’s Wolesi Jirga” (Kabul: AREU, 2007). Available at http://www.areu.org.af. Updated findings focus on the Wolesi Jirga’s first term (2005–2010) and do not cover the beginning of parliament’s second term (2010–2015), which had not begun at the time of writing.
12. For detailed background information, see Deniz Kandiyoti, The Politics of Gender and Reconstruction in Afghanistan (UNRISD Special Events Paper 4, UNRISD, Geneva, 2005), 31. Available at http://www.unrisd.org.
13. This 2005 conference was attended by an official delegation from Afghanistan, led by then minister of Women’s Affairs Massouda Jalal, and preempted the drafting of the National Action Plan for the Women of Afghanistan. UNAMA, Gender Issues, Issue 1, March 2005, http://www.iiav.nl/ezines/email/GenderIssues/2005/No1.pdf.
14. Constitution of Afghanistan, Chapter 5, Article 83, printed in The A to Z Guide to Afghanistan Assistance 2009 (Kabul: AREU, 2009), 84–113. Available at http://www.areu.org.af. The constitution states that an average of two seats for each of the thirty-four provinces be reserved for women. The actual number of seats per province depends of the population of that province—for example, in Balkh, of the eleven WJ seats available, three are reserved for women; in Kabul, of the thirty-three WJ seats available, nine are reserved for women; and in Uruzgan, of the three WJ seats available, one is reserved for women. In total across thirty-four provinces, sixty-eight seats are reserved. Reynolds, Jones, and Wilder, A Guide to Parliamentary Elections, 11.
15. For further information on gender mainstreaming, NAPWA, and the ANDS, see Anna Larson, A Mandate to Mainstream: Promoting Gender Equality in Afghanistan (Kabul: AREU, 2008). Available at www.areu.org.af.
16. Ibid., 9–19 and 45–47.
17. The president’s initial ratification of the contentious Shi’a Family Law in March 2009 is a case in point here, given that it clearly contradicts previously ratified provisions for women, such as the NAPWA or CEDAW.
18. Interviews, male and female MPs, December 2006–February 2007.
19. Interview, male MP, January 2007.
20. Kandiyoti, The Politics of Gender, 3.
21. Constitution of Afghanistan, Chapter 5, Article 83.
22. Andrew Wilder, A House Divided? Analyzing the 2005 Afghan Elections (Kabul: AREU, 2005), 1. Available at http://www.areu.org.af.
23. Interviews, female MPs, December 2006–February 2007.
24. For more on political parties and their role in parliament, see Anna Larson, Afghanistan’s New Democratic Parties: A Means to Organize Democratization? (Kabul: AREU, 2009). Available at http://www.areu.org.af.
25. Interview, female MP, April 2009.
26. Interview, female MP, April 2009. For more information on the process through which the Sh’ia law was passed, see Lauren Oates, A Closer Look: The Policy and Lawmaking Process Behind the Shia Personal Status Law (Kabul: AREU, 2009), available at http://www.areu.org.af.
27. Interviews, female MP, June 2006 and January 2007.
28. Qaum in Dari refers to a kinship group, often used to denote a wider family group or subtribe.
29. Interviews, female MPs, April 2009.