Why Omani women still on Shura Council sidelines?

There is only one woman in the current 84-member Shura Council. With registrations for candidates in the 2015 to 2019 term just over, there are no statistics available as to how many women are on the list.

Muscat: As the Majlis Al Shura readies for the eighth term election expected this year, women are asking themselves what it would take to be elected on a male-dominated council.

There is only one woman in the current 84-member Shura Council. With registrations for candidates in the 2015 to 2019 term just over, there are no statistics available as to how many women are on the list.

The election is expected to be held in September this year and the elected members will take office in November, but women know they need to do something special in their campaign to get noticed. In the 2011 polls 77 women contested but only one was successful. No woman was elected in 2007 from among 21 registered candidates. The best year for women was 2003 when two got the voters' nod and many thought it would get better but it did not.

Are Omani women to be blamed for not making most of their individual campaigns or it is the male bigotry in a very conservative country that gets in their way?

In the United Kingdom (UK), of the 650-member current parliament, 148 are women, which is about 23 per cent. Even by the UK's political standards, Omani women can take comfort that it is still a slow democratic process for them considering the fact that the first British female was elected in 1918.

Fewer women today believe that male bigotry stops them from contesting the elections compared to the general belief in 1992 when the first Majlis Al Shura election was held. Omani men do not bother anymore whether their wives stay at home, work or are engaged in political activities.

However, the word on the ground is that women lack confidence in winning a Majlis Al Shura seat believing that males vote for only fellow men. Other women have little faith in the ability of the Council's members to make any important changes in the country. But the truth is that women who put their names in the registration do not campaign wholeheartedly and often let cultural restrictions get in the way of their political ambitions.

In other words, the male dominance in the Majlis Al Shura does reflect the weakness in women in how they perceive themselves in the local political scenario and not the hostility of men towards them. But the underlying problem many see is that quite a few women stay at home and abstain from voting.

In a rare public speech in 2011, the Grand Mufti His Eminence Shaikh Ahmed Al Khalili urged women to come forward in greater numbers, to not only vote but also contest elections. It was a theological stamp of approval by Oman's top cleric that meant to encourage women.

Women make up half of the population of Omanis and it does not take a mathematician to work out that if they go in large numbers to the ballot boxes to vote for female candidates, there will be a much bigger representation of women in the next Shura term. If men do not stop them from voting, as we know for a certainty they do not, then women have only themselves to blame for their poor representation in the Omani political system.

Whether there will be a big celebration after this year's election among women, depends on whether they take themselves seriously. In theory, there is nothing to stop them, but they need to come forward in larger number to register their candidacy. Women voters also should queue up at the polling stations. Men do it and they reap the reward for just contesting the elections.

In some women's quarters, there are whispers that husbands and fathers tell their wives and daughters to vote for male candidates. We know that Omani women do not anymore oblige their husbands and wives when it comes to making decisions so these whispers are baseless but are made up by women who do not wish to see fellow women in the Shura Council.

The feminist cause in Oman has many setbacks and almost all of them are created by women themselves. Men are just used as pawns. Perhaps a decade from now, future and stronger generations of women will stop getting in each other's way and get elected on a regular basis.