Too few women in Parliament, says Mrs Akıncı

THE percentage of women in Parliament is still too low, despite recent efforts to increase the number of female lawmakers, “first lady” Meral Akıncı said last Saturday. Nine of the current batch of 50 MPs are women — a record for the TRNC — after political parties had to ensure that at least 30 per cent of their candidates at January’s general election were women.

Mrs Akıncı said, however, that the number needed to be greater, during a panel discussion organised by the Cyprus Turkish Women’s Association ahead of International Women’s Day.

“The amount of female MPs went up from 8 per cent to only 18 per cent,” she said. “It [is] absolutely dreadful that only nine out of 50 MPs are women.”

Mrs Akıncı said the 18 per cent figure was “three times below world standards”, adding that Turkish Cypriot political parties were still male-dominated.

“In the history of the TRNC, there has never been a female leader of a political party,” she continued.

“Although women’s branches [of political parties] are working to increase the number of women [in politics], society still sees politics as something that is and should be done by men.”

Mrs Akıncı said women in North Cyprus also faced inequalities in other walks of life and that they had been taught that their traditional role was to be a “mother, a cleaner of the household, a supporter of the husband”.

Citing official statistics from the State Planning Department from August 2015, Mrs Akıncı said women made up 86 per cent of unemployed people with a post-graduate qualification, 69 per cent of unemployed university graduates and 71 per cent of jobless college and secondary school graduates, while only around 29 per cent of senior government posts were held by women.

She quoted other figures estimating at least one-third of women in North Cyprus have been victims of domestic violence, and called for new laws to be implemented “immediately”.

MRS Akıncı on Wednesday paid a visit to two prominent women in the Turkish Cypriot community: Süheyla Küçük, widow of Turkish Cypriot leader Dr Fazıl Küçük, and Aydın Denktaş, widow of TRNC Founding President Rauf Denktaş.