Fadi Zaghmout

Haya:

Actually I am kind of disappointed with the results. With an unprecedented number of female candidates in the elections and with the amount of talk about the need of having more women representative in the parliament and the whole hype about women rights organizations working on gaining more acknowledgement for women capabilities in being in authoritive roles, I did expect better results.

In truth, only one woman (Falak Al Jam’ani) made it without the 6 guaranteed quota seats. That is in no way a new achievement. Toujan Faisal had made it before to the parliament 12 years ago and without any quota.

Aside from the results, what is more disappointing is the mainstream perception of the effectiveness of women in authoritive roles. The Observer discussed this matter with few female friends of his, and while he was at it, I felt like jumping off his head and shake them up. How do you think people?!!

Absurd excuses ranged from claiming the lack of efficient female candidate, to claiming the disability of women in politics. Some took the last parliament as a base for their argument that the 6 women representative in the past parliament didn’t do anything. They failed to see that those 6 where among another 80+ men representative in the past parliament and which many of them – if not all – were not efficient at all.

When I pushed The Observer to present an example of inequality that the last parliament failed to remove, as of having Jordanian women the right to pass their nationality to their husbands and children. They act in a weird way, like it doesn’t matter to them, and that they would never marry a foreign man. And when he challenged their argument that who knows what would happen, they say that what does it matter to have the Jordanian nationality anyway!

When I told them that their father or brother can easily shoot them to death and get only few months jail time under the honor crime law, they also act as if the matter doesn’t belong to them.

What strikes me is the lack of support of women for their own sex. If they don’t believe in their own sex capabilities, then how would they expect men to do so? They fail to see that if some women didn’t pioneer going out and working out side their homes 50 years ago; they wouldn’t be benefitting from the financial independence many of them having today.

We are yet to achieve equality between us and men in this society. There are a lot of social constraints that are standing in our way, but we have to work togather in order to remove them, one by one. Ultimately we will succeed. 7 representative are better than nothing.

Hope they prove to be as efficient as some people dream them to be.

Congratulations for those who won – especailly Falak Al Jam’ani.