By Rana Husseini
AMMAN - Women activists warned this week that lack of financial support is hindering efforts to support female candidates in the upcoming elections.
“We are having difficulties supporting candidates for this election because most of the support we are receiving is logistical rather than financial,” Jordanian National Forum for Women (JNFW) Secretary General May Abul Samen told The Jordan Times.
Abul Samen claimed that most international funding has gone to local human rights organisations to monitor the elections instead.
Nevertheless, Abul Samen said local NGOs will continue to hold events to support female candidates and their campaigns “with the available limited resources we have”.
Jordan National Commission for Women (JNCW) Secretary General Asma Khader said several activities planned by a national coalition to support women candidates formed in July have been conducted on schedule.
“We did not receive huge financial support but we are working with a grant that we received from UNIFEM to conduct the activities,” Khader told The Jordan Times.
The national coalition, led by the JNCW, comprises women leaders and local and government institutions and aims to provide support for women candidates, according to activists.
The coalition’s next step, according to Khader, is to hold training courses for candidates on how to deal with the media so “that they can make the best use of the media in their campaigns”.
According to Khader, 44 women have thus far announced plan to run in the November 9 elections, including 20 in Amman. Registration of candidates starts 30 days before voting day.
“Coalition members are meeting with women candidates in Amman and the governorates to learn more of their needs and offer them the needed support,” she added.
The JNCW chief said she was hopeful that at least three women would be able to win without resorting to the quota system, including one from the capital. The quota system guarantees a seat for one female candidate from each of the Kingdom’s 12 governorates.
A UNIFEM study released in March 2007 attributed women’s failure to obtain seats in Parliament to social and political factors, including a lack of trust in Jordanian society that women are capable of working in politics.
Other obstacles included the one-person, one-vote system, which the study said deters many women from running for Parliament, and a lack of financial resources for female candidates.
In May, women activists praised the temporary Elections Law for doubling the seats allocated for women in the Lower House to 12 out of 120, but warned that the quota system could prevent qualified women from reaching Parliament.
They said the percentage-based quota formula favours “inexperienced” women from smaller districts while excluding experienced women from larger constituencies.
Based on the percentage equation, women from smaller districts can win seats by collecting as few as 200 votes, while those in large cities who receive thousands of votes might lose as the quota is calculated by the highest percentage of votes cast in a given sub-district. According to the temporary law, there are 12 governorates and three badia districts that women can compete in.
This, according to observers, could prevent women in larger districts such as Amman and other major cities from winning a seat because of the “unfair percentage equation”.
The government first introduced a six-seat women’s quota ahead of the 2003 parliamentary elections.
Four years later, seven women were elected to the Lower House: Six via the quota system, while the seventh, Falak Jamaani, became the first woman to win a seat in the Lower House through direct competition after the quota was introduced.
Before that, only two women had ever served in the Lower House: Toujan Faisal, who won a Circassian seat in the 1993 elections, and Nuha Maaytah, who won a seat through parliamentary by-elections in 2001.
