An Analytical Study on Women's Participation in Sri Lankan National Politics (Based on Women's Representation in Parliament 2010-2024)

Abstract

The discussion on the political participation of Sri Lankan women must begin with a debatable approach - the reason for this can be stated as the fact that women's representation in the Parliament of Sri Lanka, the national legislature, has never reached a positive level of more than 10% from 1931 to 2024. The research problem of the study titled An Analytical Study of Women's Political Participation in the Parliament of Sri Lanka is to study why women's representation in the country's parliament has been lagging behind since 1931. The main objective of this study is to study the reasons for the backwardness of women's representation in the Parliament of Sri Lanka in the context of the 2010 - 2024 parliamentary elections. This study was conducted based on the data of 50 data contributors, 20 of whom were male and 30 were female, in the Moraketiya Grama Niladhari Division, which has about 3352 voters. A series of open-ended questions were asked to the data contributors and the data was obtained. The quantitative data obtained was analyzed under the statistical method using the MS Excel software, and the qualitative data was analyzed under the qualitative approach. It was found that the prevailing socio-cultural attitudes, character assassinations during political competition, political family background, the prevailing electoral system, violence in politics, and economic difficulties were the factors that greatly affect the backwardness of women's representation. The study data suggests that this situation can be avoided by introducing a quota system, educating voters about the importance of women's representation, and providing nominations only to educated women with political consciousness.