Where strongman failed, women are fueling a democratic revival in Sri Lanka

By Mujib Mashal & Pamodi Waravita

 

It was a brief remark during a mundane session of Parliament. But to Harini Amarasuriya, Sri Lanka’s prime minister, it was the moment she realised that her country, wrecked not long ago by strongman leaders and their populist politics, had entered a transformative moment for women.

 

A male colleague (and “not a very feminist” one, as Amarasuriya described him) stood up to say that the island nation could not get more women into the formal work force unless it officially recognised the “care economy” — work caring for others.

 

To Amarasuriya, it was “one of the biggest thrills” to hear language in government that had long been confined to activists or to largely forgotten gender departments. “I was like, ‘OK, all those years of fighting with you have paid off,’” she said.

 

 

Two years after Sri Lankans cast out a political dynasty whose profligacy had brought economic ruin, the country is in the midst of a once-in-a-lifetime reinvention. Anger has steadied into a quieter resolve for wholesale change. Through a pair of national elections last year, for president and for Parliament, the old elite that had governed for decades was decimated. A leftist movement has risen in its place, promising a more equal society.

 

Women were a driving force behind the protest movement that forced Sri Lanka’s president to flee in July 2022. When the country all but ran out of cash and fuel, the burden fell disproportionately on women, who shoulder the domestic load. Their rage sent them into the streets. Now, women are at the center of efforts to give the country lasting protections against the whims of strongmen. Women are also doing the slow and steady work of shaping a political culture that allows them equal space.

 

Women, who make up 56 per cent of registered voters, were crucial to the electoral victories late last year by National People’s Power, a small leftist outfit.

 

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, the party’s leader, has spent his life in leftist politics. He appointed Amarasuriya, a sociologist and activist, as prime minister, the country’s second-most-powerful post. She is the first woman to hold such a high post in South Asia who was not the wife or daughter of a previous top leader.

 

Amarasuriya has long preached that a more equal society cannot be achieved without making governance more friendly to women, injecting what she calls “feminist sensitivity” into policymaking.

 

The new government is taking up policy debates on improving pay parity and making work environments better for women. It hopes to raise the rate of female participation in the formal work force to about 50 per cent, up from 33 per cent. 

 

It is “a change of the way you think about government, the way you think about power and authority,” Amarasuriya said. Some of the earliest actions have included ending the VIP culture around politics. Gone are the long motorcades, large security details and lavish mansions for ministers. After female voters helped lift Dissanayake to victory in the presidential vote, the party won an absolute majority in Parliament weeks later.

 

Amarasuriya, running in Colombo, broke a record for votes that had been held by Mahinda Rajapaksa, a former prime minister, president and war hero and the older brother of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the president who was ousted in 2022.

 

The ample victories by Amarasuriya and other women shattered a myth that female politicians could not win, she said. The number of women in Parliament doubled. Still, the country has far to go — women still make up just 10 per cent of lawmakers. There are only two women among the 21 ministers in  Dissanayake’s cabinet.