Current Research

Statistical Analysis of Nominations and Representation of Women in Local Government

The requirement to undertake specific efforts to identify gender issues arises because statistics are needed for topics that may be of greater relevance to one sex than the other, and to take into account the fact that policies and programmes may have differential impacts on women and men that therefore need to be monitored separately. Until recently and almost universally, the majority of decision makers involved in identifying data requirements and developing national statistical systems have been men. Thus men’s concerns, needs and lifestyles are better represented in current statistics than women’s.

The importance of collecting gender statistics or statistics disaggregated by sex goes back to the first world conference on women data is now well established in both feminist and development circles, not only to identify gender issues but also to formulate appropriate responses to address those problems. While Sri Lanka as a matter of routine collects fairly comprehensive sex disaggregated data in relation to education and health, there is limited or no sex disaggregated data in relation to many other areas including nominations for and representation of women in elected political bodies. In relation to representation of women at local government in Sri Lanka,  the provides information on the no of women elected to local government and names of councils. This information is however not disaggregated by party or ethnicity. Data on nominations for women at local government are in fact not compiled at all much less disaggregated by party, ethnicity or district. This study therefore seeks to fill this gap in data by:

(1)  Disaggregating the number of women elected to local government in Sri Lanka following the 2006 and 2011 elections by party and ethnicity, and

(2) Compiling data on nominations for women at the 2006 and 2011 elections by the major parties, i.e the UPFA, UNP, JVP, TNA and the SLMC disaggregated by ethnicity.

It should be noted that while representation statistics cover all 24 districts, nomination statistics only cover the following 5 districts: i.e Badulla, Galle, Kurunegala, Moneragala, and Trincomallee as this data had to be compiled from original nomination papers filed by parties at the Department of Elections.

The aim of this study is therefore to unmask and disaggregate national averages with a view to identifying and understanding patterns or trends as well pathways to representation and nominations.

This study is being done as part of the project “Changing Minds: Nominations and Votes for Women” implemented by the Women and Media Collective (WMC) in partnership with the International Center for Ethnic Studies (ICES) as well as 5 other district level women’s organizations with support of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM). The project sought to increase nominations for women to at least 20% in 50 political party lists in the districts of Badulla, Galle, Kurunegala, Moneragala and Trincomalee at the local government elections held in March 2011.

While the Department of Elections does not currently collect sex disaggregated statistics as a matter of routine, the task of collecting this data is made even more difficult by the fact that nomination papers currently does not have a column to indicate the sex of the candidate. The sex of the candidate is also not indicated in nominations information published in the Gazette of the government of Sri Lanka, election statistics compiled by the Department of Elections and information available on their Website. For the purpose of this study, sex was determined from the national Identity card number which is included in nomination papers.

This study has highlighted the need to engender election data collection system and review of the data collection framework and process from a gender perspective and a systematic engendering of each specific data collection instrument.

Principal Researcher: Chulani Kodikara

Funded by: UNIFEM

Period: January 2010 to December 2011