Fight to continue for women to get a ratio of local admin positions

Fight to continue for women to get a ratio of local admin positions 

  NITIPOL KIRAVANICH

THE NATION

 

THAWILWADEE BUREEKUL insisted yesterday she would continue to push for a proportion of local administrative members to be women, but she has to wait for the meeting agenda to scrutinise the matter further. “This matter is certainly in the Constitution Drafting Committee [CDC]’s meeting agenda to scrutinise further – unless I back out from discussing the issue of proportion of women, which I would not do,” she said.

Thawilwadee says at least a third of local administrative representatives should be women, and that this proposal comes from villagers and the public.

“The proposal was gathered from a public participation forum we held to listen to their opinions, so the proposal actually comes from the public and we assure that there is proof of this,” the CDC member said. The proposal will be discussed further in the CDC’s meeting agenda. “We can explain to the public that we have proposed it in a meeting already, but the outcome is still uncertain for this women representatives proposal,” she said.

She spoke a day after CDC member Ticha na Nakorn resigned from her posts as a charter drafter and a member of the junta-installed National Reform Council (NRC). The public believes it was the issue of women’s representation in local administration that led to Ticha’s resignation.

At the CDC meeting on Friday, Ticha and Thawilwadee again supported a move to stipulate in the charter that at least one-third of local administrative council representatives should be women. The closed-door meeting lasted about an hour without any conclusion reached.

Ticha was very brief in explaining the reason behind her resignation as a charter drafter, saying on her Facebook page yesterday that four months in the position was enough and she had felt like “a fish in the wrong water”.

Isra news website reported yesterday that Sunee Chaiyaros, deputy chairwoman of the Law Reform panel nominated by the NRC, said Ticha has always been perceived as a fighter for equality. However, once Ticha took the roles on the NRC and CDC, the issue of inequality of women being addressed by the charter had not made progress, so she felt compromised by her roles.

The deputy chairwoman said the idea of a 50:50 percentage proportional split for men and women in administrative roles has never been stipulated in any charter. Moreover, Ticha felt she could not push for gender equality anymore while holding roles in the NRC and CDC. This made Ticha decide to resign and pursue her objective from “outside”, Sunee said. If the constitution did not state the importance of women’s participation and decision making by women, it would surely lead to further problems for women and people’s living quality, and the CDC could not draft the charter according to personal opinions, the chairwoman said. 

Sunee said that on March 8, which is International Women’s Day, more than 1,000 women will come out to claim that women are an important group for national development.