Chilaw Urban Councilor and Attorney-at-Law Jeevanee Kariyawasam attended the ‪#‎NotTheCost‬ conference on Stopping Violence Against Women in Politics in New York, organized by the National Democratic Institute in the US. The principal speaker of the event was NDI Chairperson and former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Kariyawasam shared her experience as a politician and a women’s rights activist in a speech titled "We are not mere objects in the world of Politics".

The text of her speech is given below:

“Violence against women isn’t cultural, its criminal. Equality cannot come eventually its something we must fight for now!” With those powerful words by the US ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, I Jeevanee Kariyawasam will commence my address.

I come from a small island, known as the Pearl of the Indian Ocean, surrounded by the sea, lavish with greenery, vibrant with culture, and a people who’s hospitality is no secret to the world.

Sri Lanka is truly a land like no other, we are proud of our heritage, our culture and our people, we are a strong nation which has battled 3 decades of civil war, been through a dictatorial reign and fighting our way through economic challenges that faces a third world nation.

But where does the woman fit in the Sri Lanka story?, being the country which produced the First Woman Prime Minister in the world in 1960 and the First Woman Executive President in the world in 1994, one could assume that Sri Lankan political leadership is a haven for Women, but yet by 2015 we have only 11 female parliamentarians out of a total of 225 members, approximately 4%.

Before I talk about violence against women in politics, let me give you a brief description about women’s representation in political bodies in Sri Lanka. There are three political bodies in Sri Lanka.

The Parliament, Provincial Councils, Local Governments.

As I said before, in parliament, out of 225 members only 11 are female, which is about 4% of the total number. In Provincial Councils out of 417 members only 14 are female thats about 3.35% of the total membership & in Local Governments out of 4465 members only 86 are female. Percentage wise that is 1.93%, which is the lowest of all political bodies.

So why are we seeing such low numbers?

When we look at most of the community based organizations in Sri Lanka, it clearly shows that most of the participants are women. And if we look at temples, churches and other religious institutions and related activities are also mostly participated by women. But unfortunately and frustratingly when it comes to politics this is not the same.

As most South Asian Nations we come from a very patriarchal society where women are mostly backward in coming into to politics due to many reasons.

Sri Lanka is a culturally intense society. The Woman’s role in society is largely formed by a conventional outlook and she is valued for her role as a mother who takes care of the house and obedient wife. And also woman is expected to be a facilitator for what her husband or what male members of her family doing. Most women find this social expectation as a barrier to move into political activities independently.

Comparing with their male counterparts, women find it difficult to move out of home and work late hours and travelling alone is also a problem for her. Therefore when she starts to work on political endeavours she would have a limited framework to work with making her more dependent on her male counterparts and supporters.

The nature of a political campaigns also do not favour women. Although the country’s democracy and governance has changed for the better during the past year, if we consider the situation more than 5 years ago, reports show the grave extent of violence that has taken place. Women do not like to get entangled in this kind of nature and she doesn’t support thuggery and violation of law and order.

Somehow even the women who are into political activities find it difficult to gain nominations as candidates because most of the time the political party leaderships believe that male candidates would have a better chance of winning elections. Added to that, even politically powerful women don’t seem to support the new comers.

So I will take this political trend to give you the story of the person standing in your presence today, Jeewanee Kariyawasam.

I was an urban council member who always raised voice against corruption and tried to promote good governance. When the provincial elections came, I requested nominations, but was refused. The former president Mahinda Rajapksha was the party leader and current president Maithripala Sirisena was the secretary of the party.

There was only one female candidate out of 19 in the list of my party. There were nominations for many persons with corruption allegations, court cases, etc. I was a person who criticized the regime at the time even though I was part of the same ruling party, as it was engaged in a lot of corruption, misuse and abuse of power.

And by the time the presidential elections came, our general secretary stepped out of the party and contested against our party candidate with the support of the opposition. Considering the situation and context of the political arena, I also moved to support him. This move was mainly because of the corrupt and dictatorship style of governance of the then President. I used my public speaking ability and travelled to many places in the district addressing gathering after gathering and conducting pocket meetings.

I used social media to disseminate my speeches. Social Media was at the forefront during the election period and due to the minimal support I had, I made use of the trending social media platform Facebook to send my message across. It was a successful effort by many people and the new president, the person whom we supported got elected. And according to the constitution of our party, the president elect was handed over the party leadership.

Five months later, the general elections came. But sadly the current party leadership gave nominations to members of the previous regime to contest at the upcoming elections. But although I asked for nominations, my voice fell on deaf ears. In general, the party leadership believed that winning combinations lay with a set group of people irrespective of their history of corruption and misuse of power. But sadly election results also proved this theory, although our party lost the election.

Once again the party leadership, although they stated prior to the elections that they were willing to give nominations to females, when the time came to put words in to action, they failed. Its Sad and frustrating to state that the party which produced the First Female Prime Minister and First Female President in the world had no females in the national list of the party as well. Women who are independent and capable of leadership roles are seen as a threat to leadership and they feel it might be difficult to keep them under control, so most of the time they are not given nominations, again proving the patriarchal nature of our society seeping into the political environment. What was even more demoralising and unfortunate as for the sake of female representation, most of the nominations were given to the wives or daughters of existing politicians or their close relations.

My story is in itself a form of violence against us women in politics. How?

When we talk about violence against women in politics, we can divide this violence into four main categories

* Physical violence

* Structural violence

* Disclose Violence

* Organizational Violence

In Sri Lankan politics as in most South Asian countries, physical violence is very common. Assaulting, vandalizing, intimidation even murders are happening during political campaigns. Most of the people believe violence is part of the nature of the politics. So everyone who wants to enter active politics have to have the ability to encounter that violence. This is a huge discouraging factor for all the women who wanting to enter active politics. When we look at the female politicians in all three political bodies most of them as I mentioned earlier are either daughters or wives of a politician or someone who has a close relationship with a politician.

Fortunately or unfortunately this actually makes sense. You need strong backing to survive in the Sri Lankan political arena. That is the main reason why we don’t see any ordinary women getting into politics.

Our political party system is not developed to reach gender equality. As I have mentioned over and over again, All of the key positions in political parties are dominated by men. They do not give enough opportunities to women. Specially when they are offering nominations & choosing party organizers. Party officials always give more priority for a man than they are giving for women. In other words, a man with an average capability is more likely to get a nomination or organizer post than a more capable woman with no political backing.

Another major issue we face as female politicians is the harassments that we face from the media. I agree that the media have to report activities of politicians, but disclosing private lives of female politicians in an unacceptable manner has become another main reason why most of the women do not come into active politics. Media always try to emphasize on female politician's sexuality, appearance instead of what they actually do as a politician.

Therefore, the battle against violence against women will continue, especially in a patriarchal society such as Sri Lanka, but as Samantha Powers’ quote I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, “Equality cannot come eventually its something we must fight for now”

We are not mere objects in the world of Politics as we are not mere objects in life in general either, we are not less capable than men either as we have proven ourselves over and over again in Human History, as the Iron Lady of English Politics Margaret Thatcher once mentioned “In Politics if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done ask a woman”

Our fight against violence against women of any sort will continue till we achieve our equal right beside man, till we see a day where political participation will be equally strong in both genders, till that day we shall break every barrier in our way and face every challenge with all our heart.