Women with recognition in the social and political life of Armenia have refused to participate in the majoritarian precincts of the May parliamentary elections, the only exception being Hranush Hakobyan, a member of every convocation of the National Assembly, who has thus far had sucess in majoritarian contests. In an attempt to increase the number of women members of parliament, a law was passed by which party lists for proportional elections must be 5% women. In the opinion of women leaders, this is the only life raft they can cling to get into parliament.

There are thirteen women who have important slots on proportional party lists in the upcoming elections. In general, these are women with experience in public political life -- Hermine Naghdalyan and Hranush Hakobyan on the Republican Party list, Alvard Petrossyan and Armenuhi Hovhanissyan on the ARF (Dashnaktsutiun) list, Ludmila Harutiunyan from the Dignity, Democracy, Fatherland bloc, Emma Khudabashyan -- the Justice (Artarutyun) bloc, Tamara Poghosyan - the Orinats Yerkir Party, Anahit Zhamkochyan and Hranush Kharatyan - Raffi Hovhannisyan’s bloc (this bloc withdrew from the election two days before the deadline), Shamiram Aghabekyan -- the LDPA, etc. But women’s movement leaders don’t anticipate that these elections will be any different from previous ones.

“Women aren’t prepared for it. When you run for office, you must understand the method, the whole process of organization. It’s a science, a woman can’t enter a race without preparing for at least a year. That is why even educated women lose out, because they don’t know how to organize an election campaign. On the other hand, the election techniques that men employ are unacceptable for women,” says Jemma Hasratyan, chair of the Association of Women with University Education.

Although the president of the country maintains that the percentage of women in appointed positions is high, Jemma Hasratyan believes that this figure is high in the executive sphere because of secretaries, administrative assistants, mid-level specialists, and cleaning women: “The executive branch is a patriarchal system: They can’t imagine somebody coming into this men’s club; they can’t talk about things when women are present they way they do when they’re not,” Hasratyan noted. She showed us a map of the world published in 2002 showing the percentage of women involved in politics. On this map Armenia is denoted by a question mark -- the percentage is so low that our country isn’t mentioned.

Nora Hakobyan, chair of the Republican Women’s Council, said of the future parliament that women with the potential have not entered the race because they understand that it’s impossible to get elected without money. “Elections are tough and corrupt and a number of women have realized that they should run on party lists. But this way, in the best case scenario ten of them will get into parliament.” She reiterated that some women had been offended by the 5% envisioned for the lists, and proposed rejecting even this 5%. “It’s fortunate we didn’t reject it, because the parties have been forced to find this 5% percent, and put their names in good positions on the lists,” Hakobyan says.

But from election to election, there has been a regression in terms of the presence of women in the governing system of the country. In the 1999 local elections, 455 women were elected to community councils, as opposed to 170 in the last elections, there used to be twelve women heads of village councils, now there are nine. In the 1999 parliamentary elections, 44 women ran in 32 out of 75 precincts. This year, 22 women are running in 56 precincts. Nora Hakobyan nevertheless points out that for the first time in our recent history the president made a statement expressing his hope that Armenian women ceome more actively and fully involved in the social and political life of the country.

We asked Professor Ludmila Harutiunyan, chair of the Dignified Future Party, who heads the Dignity, Democracy, Fatherland bloc list, to comment on how the election campaign would develop and why she was not running in a majoritarian precinct. “The majoritarian election is a struggle between gladiators, and history has never known women gladiators,” she said. Harutiunyan has observed that the election trade-off forces women to reevaluate their potential. People have gotten used to the idea that elections are deal-making. If it’s a deal, what does a woman have to do with it? The election business, like every other business in Armenia, has become a man’s business. And a big business at that, where there are no women. “Women also lose out because they can’t persuade people to vote for them. The women’s movement isn’t strong, and it doesn’t support women candidates. The women’s movement hasn’t come to understand itself as a lobbying force with specific demands, which can represent this value to society,” the leader of the party said.

She also believes that women’s rationality keeps them from running in majoritarian precincts. “I don’t have the desire to be tortured, to suffer, to be constantly told that if I spend half the money my oponents do I’ll get elected. For me an election is a political competition. It’s a chance to renew a political course, not a deal. The intelligentsia doesn’t run in elections because elections have become deals.” The sociology professor hopes that this time more women get elected to parliament on party lists.

Ethnographer Hranush Kharatyan, chair of the Hazarashen NGO was running in the up-coming parliamentary elections on the list of Raffi Hovanissyan’s bloc until the bloc decided to boycott. “It is my deep conviction that getting into the race is more and more conditioned by people’s finances. In a global sense, this is the reason that women do not run in majoritarian elections. They know in advance that it’s a waste of effort, a waste of money,” Kharatyan said. In her opinion, the type of behavior that reigns during majoritarian elections is impossible for women, perhaps because of their gender, perhaps because of their resource potential. She noted that in Armenia more than 80% of resource capital is in men’s hands. There are no women with financial resources. “Maybe some women are starting to come close, but they are nowhere near men in terms of the potential to create the necessary capital. Not according to the degree of funding required or fixed by the state, but in the shadow amounts spent on elections, and in the use of government leverage. This is another resource that is in men’s hands.”

Referring to the fact that the only woman who has achieved success in a majoritarian campaign so far is Hranoush Hakobian, who is running once again, Kharatyan noted that in the Martuni region where she runs, there exists a large, long-standing power-base founded on kinship or family relations. “This is an opportunity that has already been actively tested and used twice - it will probably work a third time.” The small number of women involved in elections is, in Kharatyan’s opinion, also conditioned by women’s passive role in both majoritarian and proportional elctions. “Even if they are represented on the lists, they are in passive slots. This shows that the behavior in so-called political parties is in general also quite masculinized, and women are there, to put it bluntly, as invitees. This invited participation is partly due to the logic of the necessary 5%, and maybe, in some very special cases, due to previous party connections or maybe to women’s power to influence, more or less.”

She pointed out another inportant phenomenon -- the majority of women on party lists are from Yerevan. “This a manifestation of the Yerevan-non-Yerevan rift. That is to say, that the zero level of regional governance has also brought about a socio-cultural and political rift, as a result of which our republic is cut of from the routine of Yerevan life.” Kharatyan has observed that a certain mode of behavior has taken shape -- women have begun to imitate men in the way they participate in the life of the country. “To all appearances, they think that this is the only way to more or less play a role, if they have anything to say. But the imitation is a very weak copy of the original. This causes distortions in the culture of behavior that can never have a positive effect in the end.”

Jemma Hasratyan, chair of the Association of Women with University Education, believes that senior government officials should manifest the will to change the situation. “There should be gender quotas like in the Scandinavian states, one sex should not exceed the other at more than 70%.”

“If you ask me, the women’s movement should actively support women candidates, this is the mission of the women’s movement. Otherwise women’s voices will never be heard. Women will always be regarded as a social force, not as a political force,” said Ludmila Harutunyan. She believes that if there are women’s organizations, and they take on political goals, then they should serve political goals. “Furthermore, women today are very strong when they enter into the political struggle, fighting for social and political issues and getting general support. I think that women’s voices are becoming audible. Our society feels that women can be trusted. There’s an idea that if our society is in a difficult situation, women will save it,” the professor is convinced.