Are women the antidote to corruption?
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A month now, protesters are invading the streets, with a massive presence and active participation of women. Women at the front lines demanding political and socio-economic reforms, adopting and feminizing the revolution.
Why are they at the frontlines?
Because women are more aware of their rights, they are claiming them and claiming their voice, claiming their agency as full citizens and equal shareholders in their country, and because they are the most vulnerable and disproportionately affected by corruption.
Corruption creates barriers to access resources and public services in a number of ways, sometimes translated not only in the “informal fee-for service” but might range from financial to sexual extortion. Corruption affects women’s access to justice. It reduces women’s access to markets and credits and reinforces their social and economic marginalization. Corruption has debilitating impact on family unity threatening the social structure as more and more persons, especially youth, are leaving the country seeking employment and as poverty is touching more strata of the population.
Women might be less aware than men of the prevalence of corruption and how it is affecting their rights as their economic and political participations are low. This is constraining their ability to hold their government accountable and change the status quo. It is therefore important to build women’s awareness of basic governance concepts and challenges. This is what many universities and CSOs are aware of, and are leading on in the different areas of Lebanon.
How can these manifestations translate into women’s contribution for anti-corruption reforms? By amplifying their voices in decision-making at the political level and involving them in planning and monitoring.
Corruption thrives in networks that are formed around social constructs upon which trust is built- whether it is gender, class, caste or other categories.
There’s some evidence to indicate that corruption blocks access of women to politics through the exclusivity of access to the patriarchal, confessional, power-sharing “network of the old boys” that mediates entry to the political sphere, amplified by gender stereotypes that men not women should be decision-makers and leaders. This is obvious in political parties where internal democratic mechanisms aren’t formalized, and can explain why elite women have been able to inherit political leadership from husbands and fathers, and why non-elite women are found in lower ranks of the parties’ hierarchy and in low numbers.
The “old-boys’ networks” also patron decision around recruitment and promotions in bureaucracies, driving women to find appointments in decision making and promotions in public offices as elusive.
“Engendering Development through Gender Equality in Rights, Resources and Voice” report by the World Bank in 2001, called for “having more women in politics and in labor force- since they could be an effective force for good governance and business trust”.
It is unrealistic to say that women are sanitizers, especially where corruption is systemic; because just as with men, when occasions present themselves women may be equally susceptible; however, the influx of new, outside the “networks” comers, make the networks more open, breach them and reduces corruption. The policies that bring in an increased number of women to public decision-making address simultaneously other determinants of good governance such as political accountability, separation of powers, freedom of press, democracy, rule of law, and transparency.
The advocacy campaigns lead to increase Lebanese women’s participation in politics tackled those principles to remove barriers and reach equality, without highlighting their impact on fighting corruption and good governance.
Women’s groups should be primary allies in anti-corruption reforms by engaging in monitoring public services to access them equally through the implementation of anticorruption instruments and advocating reforms to build public accountability and governance system.
Lebanese women must profit from this uprising to bridge a long-time gap in political representation, reject marginalization especially in negotiations and actively contribute to transition our country into sustainable peace and development where no one is left behind.
Looking proudly at my compatriots, I’m assured that if “revolution is female” the future of Lebanon should certainly be female.
Published in An-Nahar :
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