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February 18, 2009 Women’s Potential is Primarily Neglected in Armenia
Yerevan—Today, the National Citizens’ Initiative (NCI) convened a public hearing entitled “The Women in Authority Structures: Representation and Impact on Decisionmaking.” The meeting brought together political party representatives, NGO officials, members of international organizations, analysts, and media representatives. Welcoming the audience with opening remarks, NCI coordinator Hovsep Khurshudian noted that the comprehensive and indiscriminating employment of human resources in the sociopolitical processes, the economic, scientific, and in social domains and elsewhere, are of utmost importance for a small country like Armenia. And as case in point, Khurshudian brought attention to Israel, adding, “Armenia has no other alternative when it comes to foreign and domestic challenges.” The day’s first speaker, MP Stepan Safarian’s assistant Voskehat Isakhanian, presented a report (in Armenian) and also looked into the matter of women’s insufficient representation in all branches of Armenia’s bodies of power and this situation’s negative impact on effective decisionmaking. Isakhanian argued that the practice of entrusting accountable offices to women has not yet formed in Armenia. “Moreover, in certain posts—like those of deputy ministers—the number of women has reduced in the past three years, whereas as of January 1, 2005, the woman ministers in Sweden, Spain, and Finland constituted fifty percent or even more,” Isakhanian maintained and continued: “The women’s presence in the legislative and executive bodies has grown further in the aforementioned countries, whereas Armenia has kept its close-to-bottom spot of 160, among the list of 183 countries.” According to Isakhanian, Armenia has less woman ministers than Georgia and Azerbaijan. It also was underscored that the number of women in the pre- and post-election lists of the political parties was extremely small, the gender quota set out by Armenia’s electoral law was dishonored, and that solely men were designated to those parliamentary seats that were vacated over the course of parliamentary activities. During the exchange of views and recommendations following the presentation of the report, MP Anahit Bakhshian noted that the task of placing an importance to the women’s part in the political culture is being carried out with great difficulties in Armenia. And this, according to Bakhshian, is linked to the existing stereotypes and the lack of democracy. She also maintained that women themselves are likewise to be blamed for this reality because, “they not only accommodate to this situation, but also sometimes even yield to the common stereotypes.” In her turn, Tsovinar Harutiunian of the Yerevan office of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) spoke on the gender ratio at the representations of the member countries of the European Parliament and the women’s representation according to profession. In so doing, Harutiunian also drew a comparison with the woman politicians’ representation at the Armenian National Assembly. “The studies have shown the correlation between the degree of women’s presence in the given country’s ruling powers and the pace of social improvement in those countries,” Harutiunian concluded. In view of the discussants, the imperfect electoral processes, mental peculiarities, stereotypes, intolerance by male politicians, the governing electorate’s unique way of “resolving problems,” absence of the state’s gender policy, extreme workload of women, nonexistence of inner-party democracy, as well as very little or insufficient media coverage of women’s political activities are among the likely reasons standing in the way of the women’s involvement in the political processes. In the shared opinion of the roundtable participants, the women’s part in social and political processes is curtailed artificially and this cannot benefit the country’s development. Therefore it is imperative that effective measures be taken to change this situation.
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