Challenges and Solutions for the political representation of Muslim Women in Sri Lanka : A research based on Oluvil region

Abstract

Political participation of all citizens who have franchise is essential in a democratic country. Hence, participation of both genders, men and women, should be ensured in political arena. To ensure the equal participation of both genders, women’s participation is thus emphasized. according to the population ratio in Sri Lanka, women are dominant in number than men. However, political representation of women is recorded very low in electoral politics in the country. There is a crucial identification that the representation of Muslim women in political participation is considerably poor in many ways. Nonetheless, in post-independent politics in Sri Lanka, there were few Muslim women entered into public politics. Nowadays, it has gone drastically decreased in current politics in the country. In that way, it is notable that representation of women in Parliament, provincial council and other local government bodies are found very low than other ethnic women. this study has been done to identify the reasons for the lowest representation of Muslim women in politics, specifically based on Oluvil area. This area consists of seven GN divisions. And this study was conducted with the objective to find out challenges and solutions for the challenges in the political representation of women who have been inhabiting in the area.  The study identified the following reasons that hinder the women’s participation in politics, unwillingness to take part in public politics, anxiety in engaging politics in public sphere, physical insecurity, perception that public politics is suitable for powerful people like men, domestic burdens, lack of family support and rigid traditional and religious customs. In recognizing the challenges, this study proposed certain ways of managing these difficulties in order to promote political participation and representation of Muslim women in the area.