It's not about Rosy
There was an animated discussion via my facebook on the underrepresentation of women in the new parliament, following the General Election of August 17. The debate was stimulated by the fact that probably the one woman from the winning UNFGG who has come to Parliament off her own bat (not because of male spouses, siblings or parents), Rosy Senanayake , lost her seat in the preferential voting. The number of women in this Parliament has decreased to eleven, from thirteen in the previous one. The national lists of all contending parties are also devoid of significant numbers of women, and what caused the FB furore was the fact that some of us were advocating that the Prime Minister (and other leaders, though that was not quite so explicit) uses the national list to increase women’s representation, and perhaps bring people like Rosy back into Parliament. There are some people who think Rosy is arrogant – but by and large most people think she did a...