Now that the suspense has come to an end and D day of November 16 is being whispered in the corridors of power, gender lobbies have accelerated their campaign and are showing a great deal of impatience. Dev Virahsawmy, for example, has come down very hard on Paul Bérenger in a strongly-worded – some might say frantic – circular sent to newsrooms, accusing him of practising a “macho-communal-casteist logic” and betraying a fundamental principle of gender equality. He thus calls on all women to “donn li enn coreksion” (teach him a lesson).

Virahsawmy does have a point: gender equality does not seem to be high on this election agenda. There was a lot of talk about the empowerment of women but no party actually picked up the ball and ran with it. Apart from a one-liner about assigning the post of speaker to Françoise Labelle, the Labour Party and MMM leaders remained stubbornly silent about any clear strategy regarding the empowerment of women. As for the MSM/PMSD/ML bloc, their daughters and granddaughters are probably going to join one day so what’s the hurry?

Having said that, not all talk about women candidates is positive or disinterested. Navin Ramgoolam on more than one occasion repeated that the choice of any candidate will depend largely on whether s/he is “electable” or not. Though that in itself is an understandable consideration for any party, it does rather explain why we find ourselves with some calamities in our national assembly. Once you have taken care of “representation” – read, religion, colour, caste and sub caste – and “electability”, you have reduced the pool to a very restricted number of candidates. Also, since politicians no longer have the decency to resign or die before their children join politics, the choice is narrowed down even further by fielding one’s progeny – irrespective of their competence or merit.

Factor in women’s representation and you are left with a few “social workers” – of particular profiles depending on constituencies – who have time to go around towns and villages shaking hands and dishing out other people’s money in the hope of securing their support when needed. It is unlikely that women who have been busy making things work in other fields are considered “electable”. 

The result is that – with few exceptions – the women our national assembly has been attracting – some of whom were elected top of the list – have no aptitude for making any difference to the issues plaguing this country. Some not only do not contribute anything but they do not even understand the issues being discussed. The only way they try to justify their salary is by dressing up and getting bored in the national assembly once a week.

Fighting for women’s representation has also rarely been disinterested – which is one of the reasons women’s movements in this country have generally not been taken seriously. Much of the struggle does not have an ounce of altruism and is intended solely to further the agenda of a few fortunate women, who have benefitted from many personal advantages in the name of other women. At the mere mention of elections, they come out in droves to announce to us the inequality which is rampant in this country as if they were announcing the extinction of the dodo. Dodos have actually been dead for a long time. So has altruism in the fight for gender equality.

If we could, instead, talk about meritocracy without any false pretence or selfish hidden agendas for us or our children, the other inequalities would take care of themselves.