Fatima: Single women still have more opportunities that you can seize, more tasks that you can carry out. But after you get married, things change. Some of us wait years before getting married, and before having children. Because we are afraid that it will be an obstacle to our work. The interviews took place in late November 1995 more concrete options on Women and the Palestinian elections how to advance. We are in the process of liberating ourselves. At the same time, this provides a venue for more democracy. Because, before, democratisation of opportunities was very rare. Especially in the regions. We appreciate very much the democracy we are now enjoy, and which we hope to develop. We hope that this democracy will be a new basis of unity, rather than unity-through-respect-forauthority, as was the case before.
Lorena: In the past. the stress was more on the political side, on advancing the people's revolution. Then there was a stage when sexual differentiation was stressed more. We are in the process of rethinking, reformulating what best fits the present realities. We are no longer bound by national policies, policies which were rooted in 1968, the year of the founding congress of the Party. These policies were based on Philippine realities of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. But, today, we are freer to rethink, reformulate and sum up the experience of the movement and how it addresses women questions.
The question of democratic centralism is now being discussed frankly. So is the question of the indigenous people. There is discussion about what the struggle for self-determination means. All these things can be discussed more freely than before. In the old days frameworks came down to us from a very powerful authority that had to be followed by everybody. This is not the case nowadays. IV: So is it easier to be an activist today? Has the way you relate to your comrades changed?
Luisa: It is easier to be a woman activist now. It is much more obvious that you are coming in as a whole person, and therefore 10 International Viewpoint March 1996
Eileen Kuttab.
*
Women constituted 42% of voters in the January 20 Palestinian elections. About 28 women candidates participated in the elections; only four percent of the total candidates. This hardly represent the level of scope and contribution, role and achievements of Palestinian women in the national struggle, let alone the demographic weight of women. Only five of the women candidates won seats on the council. This fact can be contributed to the following factors: • The low status of women and their low level of representation in the decision-making processes in all the political parties. At the same time, women in the parties had no clear plan of action as to how to improve their status - largely due to the complicated relationship between the national and social liberation struggles. It was difficult for women to initiate an internal front in their parties when the priority has always been the national struggle. This has hindered the development of a genderconscious agenda that would have attained higher-level and effective positions in the party. Women candidates were not really supported by their political parties. Some were forced to withdraw their nominations for the sake of a male candidate.
• The women's movement was divided on the issue of participating in the elections. Debate on participation occupied most of the time, preventing women who wanted to participate from advancing their arguments on the question of quotas.
• The cultural restraints of traditional Palestinian society made lobbying and campaigning for women candidates more challenging and put additional pressure on women's performance.
• The Multi-District System, in which the number of assigned lists was limited
(and very low in some areas), decreased women's chances of success.
• The financial obligations and commitments that were required for campaigning prevented some qualified independent women candidates from running
• Finally, some male candidates used the hamula (clan) as a tool to promote themselves; for women, it was difficult, if not impossible, to use this traditional institution in the same way.*
Eileen Kuttab is a supporter of the opposition left, the coordinator of the Women's Studies Center at Birzeit
University, and the head of the women's unit at the Bisan
Center in Ramallah.
Extract from "The Palestinian Elections - A Preliminary
Analysis", published in News From Within, the monthly magazine of the Alternative Information Center in Jerusalem.
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