• The uncomfortable question

Sri Lanka does not suffer from a shortage of women. It suffers from a shortage of women who are allowed to matter. Women are everywhere in Sri Lankan public life: in universities, hospitals, plantations, garment factories, migrant labour, village committees, welfare queues, election rallies and family networks that survive because of their unpaid work. Women vote, campaign, organise, mobilise and defend political parties. Yet, when actual power is distributed, women almost disappear.

This is why the phrase “women against women” is uncomfortable but necessary. It should not be misunderstood as a claim that women are naturally hostile to women. The deeper point is that patriarchy survives not only through men, but also through women who are made to reproduce its logic. Women may become voters who distrust female candidates, elites who speak for poorer women, party workers who build male careers, mothers who train daughters to obey, or professionals who police another women’s ambition. The question, therefore, is not only why men exclude women. It is also why women sometimes participate in the exclusion of women.

Elite feminism and speaking for women

Much of Sri Lanka’s women’s rights agenda is shaped in spaces that are not equally accessible to all women. These spaces are often urban, professional, English-speaking, Colombo-centred, donor-connected and legally framed. The women who occupy them are not necessarily insincere. Many have contributed greatly to law reform, advocacy and public debate. A problem arises when their voices become the dominant voices of women. Poor women, rural women, plantation women, Tamil women, Muslim women, war-affected women, domestic workers, migrant workers, informal-sector workers and women with disabilities are often spoken about, studied and represented. They are not always allowed to shape the agenda on their own terms.

In this model, marginalised women become evidence, not authors. Their experiences are collected, translated, edited and presented by others. By the time their suffering reaches a policy table, it may have passed through elite filters of language, respectability, funding priorities and institutional caution. This is how a women’s rights discourse can sound powerful but remain distant from women’s lives. It speaks of empowerment, equality and dignity, while the woman on the ground may be negotiating wages, transport, child care, family honour, religious pressure, debt, domestic violence and the fear of retaliation.

The missing negotiable space

The greatest weakness of elite-led reform is that it often misunderstands what ordinary women can realistically negotiate. A legal reformer may say, Report harassment. The woman facing harassment may ask: report to whom? Will the Police take me seriously? Will my employer punish me? Will my husband blame me? Will I lose my income? Will the village accuse me? Will the court case take years? Will I be safe after making the complaint? This is the negotiable space that reform often ignores. The issue is not whether a proposal is morally correct. Many reforms are morally correct. The issue is whether they are socially usable. A law may give a woman a right, but, her actual life may deny her the conditions needed to exercise it.

For example, a woman in informal employment may need secure wages, safe transport, child care and protection from sudden dismissal before she can meaningfully use a formal complaints mechanism. A rural woman may support reform, she may also need reform that does not immediately expose her to family violence, social isolation or economic abandonment. A right that cannot be used becomes a slogan. A remedy that places a woman in greater danger becomes another form of neglect. Real feminism must ask not only what women should have, but also what women can safely claim, negotiate and sustain.

Female voters and the myth of automatic sisterhood

Sri Lanka also exposes another uncomfortable truth: women voters do not automatically elect women. Women are more than half of the electorate, but, this numerical strength has not produced proportional political power. Women remain severely under-represented in Parliament. Even where women vote in large numbers, they may still vote for male candidates, male parties and male-centred political cultures.

This requires us to abandon the romantic idea that women are a natural feminist voting bloc. A female voter does not vote only as a woman. She may vote through party loyalty, class interest, caste, ethnicity, religion, family pressure, patronage, fear, admiration for male authority or the belief that politics is unsuitable for women. She may trust a male strongman more than a female candidate. She may see an ambitious woman as arrogant, loud, weak, Westernised or disrespectful. This is not a reason to blame ordinary female voters. Political parties decide who gets nominations, funding, media visibility, security and organisational backing. Often, women cannot elect women because serious female candidates are not placed before them in winnable positions.

Still, the cultural problem remains. Leadership is imagined as masculine: aggressive, wealthy, connected and commanding. Since women are taught to be modest, obedient and family-centred, a woman who seeks power is treated as violating the very qualities that society claims to admire in women.

Women in parties: Labour without authority

Sri Lankan political parties are full of women, but, not necessarily full of women’s power. Women attend rallies, distribute leaflets, mobilise households, prepare food, decorate stages, sing campaign songs and defend male leaders online and offline. They are visible during elections but invisible during decision-making. They are welcomed as supporters, not always as strategists. They are useful as proof that a party has social reach, but not always trusted with authority.

This is one of the great hypocrisies of politics. Women are considered mature enough to vote, campaign, sacrifice and defend parties, but not always mature enough to lead them.

Even quota systems reveal this tension. Quotas can increase women’s presence and should not be dismissed. But, a seat is not the same as power. A woman can sit in a council and still be controlled by male organisers, family networks, financial dependency, ridicule or the lack of institutional support. She may possess the position but not the authority. The debate must therefore move beyond numbers alone. Numbers matter because without them, women remain invisible. But, numbers do not answer the deeper question: which women enter politics, who controls them, whose interests do they represent, and are they free to challenge male leadership? A politics that uses women as campaign labour while denying them decision-making power is not inclusive politics. It is patriarchy with female attendance.

Women as the moral police

Perhaps the most painful form of “women against women” occurs in everyday life, long before elections. Women often police other women in the name of culture, respectability, family honour, motherhood, religion, marriageability and modesty. A woman who enters politics is asked who will look after her children. A man is rarely asked the same question. A woman who speaks strongly is called arrogant. A man who speaks strongly is called decisive. A woman who challenges authority is called shameless. A man who does the same is called courageous.

This policing is powerful because it often comes from inside the home and community. Mothers may teach daughters to adjust rather than resist. Mothers-in-law may reproduce the suffering that they once endured. Female colleagues may punish women who rise too quickly. Women may mock unmarried women, divorced women, outspoken women, childless women, ambitious women and women who refuse silence. This is not simply individual cruelty. Many women enforce these rules because they were taught that survival depends on obedience. Having paid the price of obedience themselves, they may demand the same price from younger women. That is how patriarchy becomes efficient. It does not need men everywhere. It trains women to guard its gates.

From women’s presence to women’s power

The answer is not to reject women’s rights advocacy, women’s representation or women’s leadership. The answer is to deepen them. Elite women need not disappear from reform spaces, they must stop being the permanent translators of marginalised women. Female voters should not be blamed, but, political education must challenge the belief that men are natural leaders. Political parties must not merely nominate women, but give them winnable positions, funding, security, training and authority. Quotas must not be treated as final victories, but as openings for deeper institutional change.

Most importantly, the women’s rights agenda must move from speaking for women to creating conditions where different women can speak for themselves. The plantation worker, domestic worker, rural mother, female student, Muslim woman, Tamil widow, garment worker, migrant worker, disabled woman and local councillor must not appear only as beneficiaries of reform. They must become authors of reform. ‘Women against women’ is not the final diagnosis. It is the symptom. The disease is a political culture that teaches women to doubt women, parties to use women, elites to speak for women, and the society to celebrate women only when they do not disturb the existing order. Sri Lanka’s challenge is not merely to place more women in public life. It is to ensure that women are not present only as voters, victims, symbols or supporters, but powerful as lawmakers, decision-makers, negotiators, dissenters and authors of their own future.

The writer is an attorney and a Senior Law Lecturer at the Colombo University

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The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication