Political participation and agency beyond the war: in conversation with Tamil women in Sri Lanka
By: Celeste Koens and Samanthi J. Gunawardana
Global interest in the political identities and agency of Sri Lankan Tamil women in the late 20th century focused on their participation as armed militants in the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE,). Most of these women were drawn from the Northern and Eastern Provinces. Post-war, there is very little scholarship about Tamil women’s political agency beyond this identity. While many continue to (rightly) look at ex-combatant experiences and identities, or examined continued challenges and oppressions, in our IFJP article, “A continuum of participation: Rethinking Tamil women’s political participation and agency in post-war Sri Lanka”, we draw on narrative interviews of Tamil women in Mannar in Sri Lanka’s North, to examine their political agency beyond the dominant discourse of Tamil women as ‘militants’, ‘ex-combatants’ or 'victims.’
We were drawn to this topic for two reasons. One was because of the visibility of Tamil women in post-war movements including but not limited to, public testimony, land rights, and justice for families of the disappeared. In addition, Tamil women were strongly engaged in everyday participation in what they themselves often referred to as, ‘social work’ or community work. Clearly, Tamil women were politically and publically active in the post-war era, working actively towards transformation. How then, can we understand the nature of women’s political participation in post-war contexts?
The second reason was the lack of women in Sri Lankan politics. Women’s political participation is a core concern in feminist international relations (IR) and gender and development studies (GAD) literature. UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 stresses the importance of promoting women’s participation in post-war decision-making, and challenging women’s gendered insecurities. However, despite ratifying the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and participating in the UN Open Debate for Women, Peace and Security (2015, 2017), Sri Lanka has not committed to UNSCR 1325. In Sri Lanka’s November 2019 Presidential elections, Professor Ajantha Wijesinghe Perera was the only female candidate to contest the election. Not only was Perera the only female candidate, she is also the first female candidate to contest for presidential election in 20 years. Sri Lanka, the first county in the world to have a female head of state, currently has only 5.3% female representation in federal parliament. Only four women (all Tamil) from northern Sri Lanka, the region most affected by war, have ever been elected to the national parliament. In the first council elections since the end of the war (2013), only one woman was elected to the 38 member-Northern Provincial Council. At the local government level, the Local Authorities Elections (Amendment) Act No.16 set a 25 percent quota for women. However, in the 2018 elections, this quota was not met in 15 local government bodies from the North-Eastern Provinces. Due to this chronic underrepresentation of women in politics, it is vital to study political participation outside of formal electoral politics.
Given the above, we adopted a broad feminist IR understanding of politics, as the unequal gendered power relations that permeate women’s everyday lived experiences. Following fieldwork, it was clear that the definition of political participation needed to highlight the agentic actions required for participation. Consequently, political participation is understood as the multitude of ways women challenge and redistribute unequal power dynamics which limit agency in their daily lives. It is viewed as both a formal agentic act (e.g. contesting elections) and an informal agentic act (e.g. participating in a rally to advocate for more women contesting elections, or personally encouraging women to participate on an individual basis).
In the post-war period, the women in our study expressed concern about their economic insecurity, the reimposition of traditional gender norms and the threat of sexual and gender-based violence. These insecurities, in combination with the masculinisation of politics, makes formal political engagement both undesirable and inaccessible to many women. Male politicians were often described as disingenuous and disconnected from women’s concerns. Consequently, many participants saw a need for greater female representation in formal politics. They sought to promote women into politics through challenging the oppressive and gendered power structures that excluded them from engaging.
The women we interviewed participated in public life to advocate for change within their community through the mobilization of resources for gender justice (e.g., SGBV) and material security (e.g., sustainable livelihoods). Their ultimate audience was often various state institutions (legal bodies, governments) of whom they had strong expectations for service delivery and justice in the post-war period. Some of the participants sought to participate in these institutions, while others sought to empower women to engage and challenge institutions, such as political parties, to accept more women. Unlike the activities of previous movements such as the Mothers Front, who framed their activities as non-political during periods of conflict, women’s community participation post-war has —among other aims — the explicit goal of promoting women’s higher political consciousness, political representation, influence, and voice.
While the narratives of the women we interviewed represent a small fraction of Tamil women in Sri Lanka, their response of community-based participation resonates with the experience of women in post-war Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina, Northern Ireland and Nepal. Collective action can transform structures and norms that prevent women’s participation and reinforce traditional power structures. Participation within community organizations can be considered a part of the continuum of participation, which is grounded in participant’s recognition of the gendered power dynamics between political processes, politicians themselves, and the consequent impact these have on women’s lives in public and private spaces.
A continuum of political participation approach to understanding post-war contexts is essential because it identifies the ways in which women are exerting agency in post-war contexts such as Sri Lanka to deconstruct the oppressive and exclusionary norms in their lives. This is important to lay the foundations for more formal participation in processes such as peace negotiations and elections. This can inform approaches to promote diversity of women’s political voice in post-war contexts.
Read the full article ‘A continuum of participation: rethinking Tamil women’s political participation and agency in post-war Sri Lanka’
Celeste Koens completed her Masters of International Development Practice at Monash University and is currently a Project Evaluation and Research Officer for Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS).Samanthi J. Gunawardana is a Senior Lecturer in Gender and Development in the Faculty of Arts, and a member of the Monash Gender, Peace and Security Centre.
Samanthi J. Gunawardana’s research examines the impact of development policy on employment systems, labour, and livelihoods among rural women in South Asia, as well as their participation in leadership and organizing within these realms. Her research highlights the connections between work and social reproduction.
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