UEC chairman urges political parties to encourage female participation
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Tin Aye, chairman of the Myanmar Union Election Commission, urged political parties to encourage more females to run for office in the upcoming national elections at a meeting at the Panda Hotel in Yangon on December 15.
He said gender equality is crucial for Myanmar, which is on a path toward embracing a real democratic system.
He also pointed out that the current proportions of female participation in politics and business are very low.
"Political parties need to nominate more qualified female parliamentary representatives to increase gender equality. In this way, more women will be elected as MPs," the chairman said.
The Open Myanmar Initiative, a Yangon-based parliamentary monitoring organization, released a report in June saying the number of elected female representatives accounts for about 5 per cent in Pyithu Hluttaw, even though there are over 1.7 million more women than men in the country’s population of 51.41 million, according to the provisional results of the 2014 population and household census.
