Mongolian pop singer and single mother Nara swapped her trademark miniskirt for a traditional deel to campaign in tented slums for a seat in parliament, but would-be female parliamentarians face an uphill challenge as the nation goes to the polls today.
Female politicians have been making strides in Asia in recent years, and on some measures Mongolia fares well on gender equality, but weeks ago mostly male members of parliament voted to reduce a quota for female candidates.
Nara, 33, whose full name is Munkhturiin Narantuya and who has a two-year-old son, aspires to “change the system, involve myself to influence how the system should work,” she said, as she walked past open drains in the nation’s capital, Ulan Bator.
Photo: AFP
Best known for her hit single Discovering Myself, she has 175,000 Facebook fans and has used social media to highlight her experiences of domestic violence.
However, she has faced an onslaught of gender-related insults during her campaign, with one video posted online pillorying her for working as a “hostess” at a bar in Japan.
“I am frustrated about why we can’t improve our healthcare, why can only rich people can go abroad and be treated,” she said. “My competitors try to slander me based on who I was and how I acted.”
In some areas, Mongolia is unusually progressive — more than two-thirds of the country’s higher degrees go to women, according to the Mongolian Ministry of Human Development and Social Welfare.
The education gap starts at a young age, with rural families sending school-aged girls to towns for schooling, while boys are kept at home to help with herding livestock. However, conservative attitudes endure and discrimination is still rife, with women’s wages on average 19 percent lower than men’s, according to a survey by Mongolia’s National University.
Women have been swept to power in recent years across Asia, most recently in Taiwan, where Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) was elected president in January. South Korean President Park Geun-hye, daughter of a former dictator, has led the nation since 2013 and Yingluck Shinawatra was prime minister of Thailand from 2011 to 2014.
In the last election, Mongolia had a quota requiring 30 percent of candidates to be female, which saw 11 women elected to the State Great Hural out of 76 seats. Female lawmakers have been credited with pushing forward legislation that improved women’s lives, including increased punishments for domestic violence and more childcare centers, helping mothers enter the workforce.
“Problems that usually affect women, such as kindergarten and other social issues, cannot be solved without women,” said Luvsangiin Erdenechimeg, head of the women’s caucus in parliament.
“We solved a number of important legal issues that were never allowed in the previous parliaments where only men were members,” she said.
She is standing for a second term with the ruling Democratic party, but with the female candidate quota cut to 20 percent this year, she says that there is “no will” to bring women into political leadership.
The rule change “reveals that the majority [men] don’t want to share power with women,” said Zolzaya Batkhuyag, director of advocacy group Women for Change.
Some women are campaigning on issues beyond gender, in a country whose rich resources have yet to fulfill its people’s hopes for higher living standards.
Baatarjaviin Munkhsoyol, an independent female candidate pursuing a doctorate at a university in Canada, is standing on a business-friendly, pro-investment platform.
“The situation could have been better this time if there were smarter policies,” she said.
Ordinary Mongolian women point to their power in the home as a sign of their potential on the national stage.
“I think women can be involved in the political leadership,” said Buyantogtokhiin Tserendulam, a 35-year-old voter. “In Mongolia, it’s common that women make decisions at the family level.”
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RIVALRY: ‘We know that these are merely symbolic investigations initiated by China, which is in fact the world’s most profligate disrupter of supply chains,’ a US official said China has started a pair of investigations into US trade practices, retaliating against similar probes by US President Donald Trump’s administration as the superpowers stake out positions before an expected presidential summit in May. The move, announced by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce on Friday, is a direct mirror of steps Trump took to revive his tariff agenda after the US Supreme Court last month struck down some of his duties. “China expresses its strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to these actions,” a ministry spokesperson said in a statement, referring to the so-called Section 301 investigations initiated on March 11.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
RSS