In Israel’s Knesset, female representation lagged in first two rounds of elections but recovered in this month’s votw
Egypt and Saudi Arabia have made progress in terms of women’s representation in politics, but Lebanon’s new government, formed on January 21, has them beat, with an unprecedented six female cabinet members (out of 20), including Zeina Akar, the first defense minister and deputy prime minister in the Arab world.
Notably, Raya El Hassan was appointed finance minister in 2009, as one of two women in then-prime minister Sa’ad Hariri’s cabinet, and was interior minister from January 2019 to January 2020, the first woman in the Arab world to hold the post.
In Israel, where there have been an unprecedented three rounds of elections in 11 months, women’s representation has fluctuated, but the new 23rd Knesset will have 30 female Knesset members (25%) once it is sworn in on March 16, a record for immediately after an election.
However, the 20th Knesset had 29 women after the 2015 elections, and before it was dissolved ahead of the April 2019 elections, the number of female lawmakers had risen to 35 (just over 29%), the most ever in Israel, after several women entered the parliament to replace other members who resigned to become cabinet members or for other reasons.
Asad Bishara, an analyst and previously an adviser to former Lebanese justice minister Ashraf Rifi, told The Media Line that the current women’s representation in Lebanon was a natural development, as women had been met with much success in the country’s public domain over the years.
“In terms of overall development, the women’s movement in Lebanon leads in the Arab world, but in terms of political representation, they had done poorly despite their strength in society. However today, Lebanon has the first Arab woman as minister of defense,” Bishara said.
Egyptian women have made many gains in the past few years in the executive, legislative and judicial branches. Eight women obtained ministerial portfolios in the current government, or 24% of the cabinet, and others became provincial governors and deputy governors. And for the first time, a woman was assigned as a deputy to the justice minister.
In 2019, the number of female judges in Egypt reached 66, while the representation of women in the diplomatic corps was 24.8%, the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics said.
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Amani El-Tawil, an Egyptian lawyer and director of the Women’s Program at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, previously worked as a consultant for the UN in Sudan. She told The Media Line that the increase in women’s representation in the Egyptian parliament began prior to 2017 due to two factors: political will in the country and a change in social circumstances.
“There was political will [in 2014] to empower women. This was manifested through the election law, which stipulated the representation of women, Copts and special needs persons. Right after that, the number of women representatives was 90,” El-Tawil elaborated. “Moreover, social conditions allowed women to be elected, meaning that restrictions on women’s candidacy were reduced and society became more accepting [of women in positions of power].”
Nevertheless, she said that the level of representation in future parliaments would be entirely dependent on the electoral system in place.
“A quarter of the government consists of women, and that is because Egyptian women are qualified and they have proved it. In addition, there was their decisive role in overthrowing the Muslim Brotherhood − a system that threatened their existence and their lives − in the 30 June Revolution [the mass protests in 2013 that concluded seven months of protests and ended with a coup d’état on July 3],” El-Tawil said.
Regarding the jump forward in Saudi women’s rights, she said that on the level of public discourse and the Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s rhetoric, there was progress, but that on the ground, there was much cultural and religious resistance.
In 2019, Riyadh appointed Princess Reema Bint Bandar bin Sultan as ambassador to Washington, the first woman to occupy the post, and Norah Al Faiz as the first female Saudi vice minister of education and the first woman to hold a cabinet-level office in the kingdom.
A central part of the Saudi Vision 2030 development plan is for Saudi women to work across a broad spectrum of industries, as opposed to being limited to certain narrow sectors. Riyadh has committed to increasing the rate of female employment from 22% to 30% by reforming both the economy and the legal system.
Saudi women now can obtain travel documents, including passports, without the consent of a male relative, can drive, and can register as co-heads of household, along with their husbands.
Wisam al-Nasser, a Syrian social analyst and social media expert based in France, told The Media Line that the Saudi crown prince was pushing through the advances in female representation and rights so he could promote himself as a social reformer and as a women’s rights activist, for public relations reasons.
“He’s doing all of that to serve his image and save his face. The same thing happened in Syria when the Ba’ath Party used women’s rights to promote itself as a secular system, where it required women representation in electoral lists and the vice president was a woman,” Nasser said.
He explained that throughout the past 10 years in the Arab region, the idea of increased female representation in government has erupted in parallel with women’s freedoms, after the wave of “Arab Spring” protests that started in Tunisia in 2011. However, it was often used by authoritarian regimes to increase their legitimacy while maintaining their despotic rule.
“The feminist movement was used to convey messages that certain of these regimes defend women’s rights and work to achieve equality, not only in Saudi Arabia and Syria, in Egypt too. But look at the real situation of women on the ground, it’s shameful,” Nasser said.
In Jerusalem last month, women gathered to protest the decrease in female representation in the first two rounds of the recent Israeli elections, in April and September 2019, as parties on both the Left and Right merged ahead of the votes in an effort to be able to form government coalitions. As a result, women wound up lower on the Knesset candidates lists, and none of the major parties was headed by a woman. In April 2019, the number of women elected to the Knesset dropped to 29 (out of 120 parliamentary seats), and after the September vote, women held only 28 seats (23% of the total).
However, the Knesset elected this month will include 30 women representatives.
In Bahrain, Fawzia Zainal was voted in as the first Gulf woman to chair the parliament of her country, following the legislative elections in 2019.
Moreover, in the United Arab Emirates, President Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the emir of Abu Dhabi, issued a directive in December 2018 that half the members of the Federal National Council would be women, in what was considered by some as a bold decision and an important step in promoting equality in decision-making and democracy building. Seven of the 20 members elected in October 2019 were women. Therefore, 13 of the 20 appointed members were women in order to achieve gender parity.