Sudanese Women and Elections: Arguments of Exploitation and Empowerment (2 - 2)

Study published on the www dot ikhtyar dot org website
Translated by moatinoon

Womens vote: mere voice or conscious will?

Despite the large boycott of the April 2015 elections in the Sudan, in which the opposition refused to participate, and even launched the Leave campaign with the aim of urging citizens to abstain, women were at the heart of the electoral landscape and formed the largest proportion of voters according to regional observers from the African Union, the media and local civil society.

In return, opposition women organized events often besieged by the security services, urging women to abstain. On the other hand, the women of the ruling party were mobilizing to support the elections under the slogan Elections are a race decided by women. Some newspapers reported that Bashirs election campaign distributed thousands of womens clothing (Sudanese national uniforms) to women in different states. Those clothes were green and carried the logo of the tree, the ruling partys electoral symbol. The ruling regime has campaigned hard against opponents, especially women, who appear to have been the regimes biggest bet for the success of its elections. Most Sudanese had decided to boycott it because they saw no point in it, because it would not have brought any new ones. Activist Sandra Farouk Kadda, who was one of the leaders of the youth and feminist campaign to boycott the elections, was abducted, her family was intimidated, tortured and humiliated, and when she filed a case against the security services she was threatened. Dozens of women and men were reportedly arrested ahead of the elections, but some women activists, especially in Khartoums provinces and peripheral areas, were assaulted and tortured during the detention, amounting to sexual violence and threats to families because of their participation in the campaign to boycott the recent elections.

In an interview with an activist from the Central State of the Sudan who would prefer to withhold her name for security reasons, she confirmed that she had been dismissed because of her involvement in the deportation campaign. She said that, in a central state of the Sudan, my female colleagues at the Ministry of Local Education were threatened with dismissal if they did not go to vote. In another interview with a local civil society observer in the elections, he said that (teachers in schools in the Omdurman peripheral areas were threatened with dismissal and salary cuts if they did not go to vote).

This particular phenomenon relates to the fact that the proportion of women in the civil service is comparable to the proportion of men employed in the civil service, who account for 65% of the States employees. In view of the deteriorating economic conditions and low salaries, men tend to create sources of income from self-employment or the private sector, and they do not rely 100 per cent on the States salaries. Although similar threats and pressures have also been experienced, women workers responses appear to have been stronger, also under the threat of economic violence and discrimination against women collectively.
Here we see one example of womens right to vote becoming a means of exploitation and economic violence against them by threatening to cut off their livelihoods. This is an example at the level of major cities, and also reflects the change in the governing systems means of attracting voters, especially women. In previous elections, voting was sometimes linked to the payment of money to women or promises of employment or promotions, especially in cities. Sometimes the sound was worth 50-100 Sudanese pounds, which is currently 5-10, which, according to eyewitnesses, occurred in the areas of central Khartoum in 2010. But the poor economic situation that the regime itself is going through has seen it seemingly resorting to intimidation rather than daunting this election.

Rural women: collective voting

At the rural level and in villages most remote from urban areas, high illiteracy rates, the large gender gap in education and womens illiteracy rates of 50% in urban areas and 58% in rural areas, and male domination, have deprived women of a great deal of their autonomy. Although womens contribution to production in the agricultural sector is 87% compared to 70% for men, it is not economically or socially appreciated and has not contributed to the empowerment of rural women in the Sudan. This is evident in the income gap between women and men, as the United Nations estimates womens annual income at 1,000 compared to 3,000 for men up to 2007.

Added to the tribal social composition that adopts male domination, whether in Muslim, non-Muslim Arab or non-Arab ethnicities. This has increased pressure on women in the countryside and continues to be home to 67% of the Sudans population. These rural-urban disparities were evident in the voting ratios of the different states in the 2015 elections. Voting in urban states was less intense than in rural states. Voting in Khartoum, the national capital of nearly 8 million people, was about 34%, compared with 66% in Kassala State in eastern Sudan, where the population is dependent on herding and agriculture and where high rates of poverty, malnutrition and illiteracy are prevalent among women.

Since the beginning of the electoral process in the 1950s, the Sudan has adopted a policy focusing on the constituencies relative geographical distribution, focusing more on urban than rural areas, with a focus on areas of awareness and development. But in the elections of the last 10 years in particular, the system of individual geographical circles was adopted to represent 60% of the parliamentary seats, in the opposite political direction going back to the countryside to gain more votes on tribal and religious grounds. This has had a significant impact on womens voter participation ratios, as noted by a political activist (political parties have supported the quota system for women in terms of attracting womens votes as a voting bloc), and this overview of all Sudanese political parties.

Supporting and moving women to participate in elections was not motivated by womens political empowerment but rather to exploit their voting power in elections. The ruling partys cars roamed the villages during the elections and were supported by representatives of occasional Sufi roads and tribal leaders. Vehicles are carried by women from inside homes to voting centres, as described by eyewitnesses. It is a frequent sight across Sudans rural and tribal towns and villages.

Professor Belgis Badri and Professor Samia, in their paper on Côte dIvoire and its impact on the political participation of women in the Sudan, say that: the political discourse in supporting Côte dIvoire depended on the importance of women in parties as elected and their role in supporting election campaigns and womens support for parties. In the same paper, the researchers noted that women outside the cities did not receive the necessary electoral education ahead of the 2010 elections, which saw intensive campaigns by civil society to educate despite time constraints.

The recent elections had not been preceded by any preparation or education of women, and their knowledge of how to exercise their electoral right was therefore very weak. This adversely affects the reality of significant participation at the voting level s political elite in cities and at the power level, especially women parliamentarians, According to the researchers Badri and Nakr, even in Khartoum neighbourhoods as well as some upscale neighbourhoods, women knew nothing about women having a cat and some of them might have known that women existed.

Conclusion:

These facts and observations point to the significant gap in statistical and field research investigating womens voting ratios, patterns and objectives. The exploitation of womens ignorance and illiteracy by all opposition and ruling political forces remains a major cause of womens high participation in elections, whether as voters or even candidates, rather than their political awareness or interests imposed by the discriminatory and exclusion situation of Sudanese women. As noted in the study on clicking and Badri, some parties have included women in the nomination lists in a desire to fill in the cot and to align with international trends and commitments imposed by the international community. This makes womens right to exercise politics in the context of the right to vote and to stand for election subject to considerable debate about the feasibility of a quantitative increase that may lead to the exploitation of women rather than their empowerment. Conversely, the view that quantitative, even long-term, importance of changing womens perception of women with larger mobility spaces might set an example for other women is important, but may be underestimated by the fact that Sudan, for example, has experienced numerically large feminist representation since the 1970s. political parties , did not adequately affect the change in male patterns of control within political parties and governing systems and therefore within society, Making any enforcement of any laws, however powerful, difficult on the ground legislation , assuming that women have access to the instrument of those laws on the basis.

However, in the case of the Sudan, political division, poverty, repression and racial persecution based on religion and ethnicity, as well as armed conflicts, have further dispersed the efforts of womens rights groups and their ability to focus on obtaining rights. In contrast, the Islamist tendencies of the ruling regime, which at many points converge with those of the traditional tribal community in central and northern Sudan that expresses the countrys dominant ethnicities, Made concepts about women and womens rights, fanatic about womens personal rights and relatively open about womens economic and political roles. Women are allowed to work, educate and participate in politics but within limited frameworks that preserve women in stereotypical family functions womens participation in decision-making and participation in public and destiny issues, such as conflict resolution and the political industry.

This has resulted in a weakness in womens ability to achieve real changes that advance their status, end qualitative forms of discrimination and destroy male culture that limits their opportunities for equality and empowerment. As a result, despite advances in rights, womens political participation in the Sudan is far from a real change in the countrys political decision-making mechanisms. This is a natural reflection of the contentious relationship between the ability to make laws and the transformation of those laws into reality behind them. This underscores the importance of continuing the constructive debate on quantitative feasibility and regardless of effectiveness in the process of womens political participation. Bearing in mind the important gaps between womens elites changing laws and the rules that are supposed to be the primary beneficiaries of such changes. Building links between ideologically and classically different groups of women, such as rural and urban women, seems to be one of the most important foundations for creating awareness.