"Circle the women! With four circles of a pen you can set in motion big changes in political representation," says Johanna Nejedlová
What exactly is the female experience and how do you think it will affect the work of the House if there are more women in it?
I would like to live in a world where experience is not defined by whether you are a woman or a man. But it's still the case that our society raises girls a little differently than boys. For boys, the emphasis is on being strong and brave, for girls it's more about being nurturing. And then their careers in life are different. Women are more likely to work in care-related fields or in administration, while men choose more technical fields. This then translates into their experience. And when they make decisions, they naturally base them on what they know.
Women are also much more likely to care for children or their elderly parents. That you lack that experience in the House may be reflected, for example, in the vote on the age at which nursery places are guaranteed. Our all-male House recently agreed that children as young as two will not be guaranteed places. However, Members have not at all taken into account the many women who either want to go back to work or have to go back to work because they are single mothers or their family is very poorly off financially and needs a second salary.
Women are also more likely to take care of the household in the Czech Republic, which means that they also do the shopping. I have recently seen older surveys that looked at whether the men in the Chamber of Deputies know how much things cost. And a lot of them didn't know. If you have no idea how the real world works, it's absurd to be involved in making policy that affects it.
Is the Czech public interested in women in politics?
Surveys say that 59% of Czech men and women would like to see more women in politics. Unfortunately, a large number of political parties do not yet reflect this. We do have women in lower-level municipal politics much more often than men, but these tend to be positions that are often done for free, and there is not as much decision-making power. So there is interest from women themselves. But they don't get to the top because they face a lot of barriers.
In high politics, women are much more likely to face scrutiny and criticism about how they look, for example. I recently read an assessment of the hairstyles of our female ministers, which is certainly not the case with men.
Is it not the fault of the voters themselves that women do not get into the House of Commons?
A few days ago, we were discussing women in politics with the public in Prague on Náplavka. We mostly addressed couples, because that's where people go together to buy farmer's food. The women said, "Yes, that's very important!" and the men said, "I think we have more important problems. And look at Schiller or Maláčová!" Yet if we look at David Rath, for example, we don't say that men are failing in politics or that we don't want doctors in politics because that is always a problem.
A lot of people have a problem with the preference for women because they are afraid that women will get into the leadership who will be worse than men and will be elected just because of their gender. So these people also neglect the fact that so far men have been preferred regardless of the fact that they are often worse than women, and nobody minds...
We assume that the parties do have capable people on the ticket, don't we? There's always the possibility that someone will be circled all the way to the top. Even in last place, there shouldn't be someone who will fail significantly once elected. We also have examples where successful politicians are deliberately put at the bottom of the list and expected to skip everyone, so that they can then claim they got a lot of preferential votes.
We tell the people we are reaching out to that they should not circle a woman just because she is a woman. We really want them to find out about the candidate and make their choice as informed as possible. That's one of the reasons why we have a list of all the women running in this election on the website with the information we found about them. We're not even saying that people have to use all four preference votes for a woman candidate. There are certainly quality men representing the views that a male or female voter wants to have represented in the House of Commons. It is only fair to give such a person a ring; after all, we need men in Parliament too.
Do you think that all the women who are ringed by voters will be happy about that? Is it not the case that some women are standing for election but do not wish to be elected because they do not want to spend all day in Parliament because of their families?
Yes, there are often meetings until 10 o'clock at night. Which is one of the things that could change the moment there are more caring people in the House of Commons. Maybe it would be nice if male politicians spent some time with their families too.
The question is whether the ringed woman who did not count on the mandate will reconsider her position the moment she gets a strong vote of confidence from the electorate, because she will see that people really want her in the House. And then there is always the option of giving up the mandate and leaving it to someone from a lower rung. But it will still be an interesting signal for political parties when they find out that they had women circled on their candidates, but for some reason they decided not to take the chance.
We are actually used to women's names in politics. We envy our neighbours the Slovak President, Zuzana Čaputová, and the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel. New Zealand, led by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, has been very successful in its fight against covid. So why does it take so long for women to enter our politics?
I think it's a mixture of factors. The important thing will be that in a lot of countries where women have held senior positions, there have been measures taken to support them in some way and enable them to get into those positions - whether it was party quotas or incentives for parties that put more women on the ticket. The Czech Republic is very sceptical about this; Czechs do not like to be ordered around. We at the Circle a Woman initiative say: let's try it this way. You say you want more women in politics, so let's do something about it.
Johanna, why aren't you running?
I have other work to finish. But I'm not saying politics will never be an interesting option for me. I find it frustrating in some ways that I can't be directly involved in the change I want to see. Of course, I would like to see a lot of people in the House of Commons who represent my views. If it turns out that they really aren't there, maybe I'll think it's time to take matters into my own hands.
