News Journal: Missing in many democracies: Women

I returned last Saturday from my third trip to Ukraine this year.
On this trip, I was once again part of a multinational delegation sponsored by the nonprofit, nonpartisan and nongovernmental National Democratic Institute. The Ukrainian parliamentary elections will take place on Oct. 26; as stated in our report, we were there to “review the broader political environment; examine factors that could affect the integrity of the electoral process; and offer recommendations to support peaceful, credible elections and public confidence in the process.”
There are still a lot of very big unknowns that will affect the upcoming elections, but the NDI delegation I was part of in April and May concluded that the presidential election of May 25 was carried out in a fair, democratic manner. There are definitely security threats and some real weaknesses in the electoral framework, but we generally agreed if they continue to demonstrate the political will they did in May, Ukrainians can have another successful election. Our report can be found at www.ndi.org/UKR-PEAM-2014-statement.
It is hard to overstate the magnitude of changes Ukrainians have lived through since the February Maidan square demonstrations in Kiev that overthrew a corrupt president. In the seven months since, they have democratically elected a new president, watched helplessly as Russia annexed Crimea, and stood up against Russian interference and covert military action in their eastern provinces.
Their situation now is complicated and fraught with all kinds of danger. But I was there specifically to observe the election process, and it was exciting to see so many new faces from the Maidan movement who are moving into responsible government positions and running for seats in the parliament. It was especially encouraging to see how many women have become politically active and are running for office.
I am convinced that no country can truly be successful in the world of globalization unless it takes advantage of the skills of all its citizens, regardless of gender. But the pre-Maidan Ukrainian electorate mirrored what was true in many of the countries that had been part of the Soviet Union. The NDI report points out that “women represent 54 percent of the Ukrainian population and an even higher proportion of its voters, but they are grossly underrepresented in politics as leaders. In the 2012 parliamentary elections, only 16 percent of the candidates were women. In the current parliament, 9.4 percent of the MPs are women (the global average is 21.9 percent; in the present U.S. congress women hold 18.5 percent of the seats).”
Ukraine is falling short of fulfilling its Millennium Development Goal commitment of women filling 30 percent of top leadership positions by 2015. But according to NDI’s research, nearly half of Ukrainians believe there are too few women in elected office. And in the upcoming election, a number of political parties have met the 30 percent quota of women nominated for office.
What impressed me even more than the percentage of women running for parliament were the qualifications of many of them. The NDI delegation met with a number of extraordinary women who had never been involved in electoral politics but had been picked to be part of the lists of candidates the parties submit to the Central Election Commission.
We met with a female candidate who is a doctor with a string of degrees and who had set up facilities during the Maidan demonstrations to care for the wounded. Another woman worked her way up through the business world and made enough money to attend the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and earn a master’s degree in Public Administration. Another was a correspondent for a TV channel in Kiev who had resigned to protest the practice of media companies accepting money for favorable stories disguised as news. She was one of a number of radio, TV and print journalists, male and female, who covered the Maidan demonstrations and have filed to run for parliament.
President Poroshenko has made it clear to all that, no matter how grave the security challenges, it was important to call these parliamentary elections right away. The present parliament is filled with corrupt members from the previous administration and I believe the Ukrainians are ready to sweep most of them from office. Their country has a tough road ahead, but a lot of fresh, talented new faces in parliament will be a sign that it is going to succeed.
Ted Kaufman is a former U.S. Senator from Delaware.