Quotas: A Worry That Reminds Me of My Father - Manar Zaiter
Quotas: A Worry That Reminds Me of My Father - Manar Zaiter
The year 2025 took me back to 2006 not only because that was the heaviest and most painful year due to the loss of my father, but also because it reminded me of an experience that shaped my feminist and human rights consciousness.
In 2006, as is customary in families and clans across various regions of Lebanon, especially in the Beqaa, it was necessary to organize the fortieth-day memorial for my father's passing. At the time, I was 26 years old and decided to deliver what’s known as “the family speech” at the memorial. This caused conflict among my male cousins due to the boldness of a “girl” suggesting something unconventional and in violation of norms and traditions. The matter even reached the point of seeking a religious cleric’s opinion. For several reasons, I was ultimately allowed to do what I wanted. At the time, I didn’t care much about the disagreement, its reasons or consequences, despite my love for all my cousins. I simply wanted to say to my father what I couldn't in the ICU, just hours before he passed away.
I don’t know why the past months of 2025 brought me back to that experience as I watched and engaged with Lebanon’s recent municipal elections. Nor do I truly know the connection between that distant event and the issue of women’s political participation in these elections, which brought little new—whether in terms of the numbers and levels of women's participation, which saw only slight progress, or in terms of the persistent factors that continue to exclude women from the public sphere.
I believe it is the discourse of recent years that felt different—and troubling—because of its role in shaping what we talk about and how we frame it.
In recent years, women's political participation has often been framed as “women demanding seats at the table where public policies are made.” Given the slow increase in the number of women in politics, the quota system has been considered a key mechanism for achieving gender balance in political institutions. That is valid. But it would have been more useful for the discussion around gender-balanced political processes to go beyond mere numbers or just inserting women into parliaments or municipalities. The assumption that official or numerical participation in state institutions will automatically lead to representation of women's interests and deeper democracy has proven false. As a result, quotas have failed to address the root causes that tangibly exclude women from the public sphere in many countries—let alone a country like Lebanon.
The Lebanese context reveals a superstructure that defines women's opportunities and limits their political ambitions. This system pays no attention to women’s lived experiences or their family and social burdens. It also lacks the mechanisms that would help them reconcile their various roles if they wish to pursue political advancement. This structure is built on the foundations of political, familial, and sectarian clientelism, and it reproduces itself through women as well. Many women adopt the current model and view it as the only viable means for engagement and participation, especially when it offers them a form of protection. This reflects the deep entrenchment of a patriarchal system that keeps women in subordinate positions.
Unfortunately, this system cannot be dismantled simply by implementing quotas. In this country, having women “at the table” doesn’t necessarily mean meaningful participation or representation that contributes to gender equality or impacts large numbers of women. Addressing the complexities of gender inequality in policymaking requires more than just the visible presence of women politicians. It requires linking that presence to influence—moving from tokenistic representation to substantive participation. This shift is more sustainable and can make decision-making spaces more democratic, inclusive, and just. Only through **substantive representation** can women’s political participation change the meaning of politics and the way it is done, making it truly reflective of real issues.
Today’s discourse focuses heavily on numerical representation—and that is a legitimate demand—but it is not accompanied by a call to transform political processes to make them more inclusive and responsive to women's interests and diverse voices.
This debate about women's quotas also brings us to Lebanon’s confessional quota system, where each sect is allocated seats monopolized by a dominant political force that controls the sect’s decisions. This means the sect is represented, but its people are only represented through that dominant force.
Will the women’s quota replicate the same logic of sectarian allocation? Or should we seek other models that liberate society from all forms of domination—including patriarchal dominance?
Today’s discourse is rooted in the assumptions and rules of liberal feminism. This approach focuses on individual empowerment and legal rights without addressing the deep systemic inequalities. It shifts the responsibility onto women without changing unequal structures. It also fails to acknowledge that the patriarchal political, economic, social, and cultural system is the root cause of women’s oppression—and makes no attempt to dismantle it.
In this liberal feminist game, individuals are seen as entrepreneurial agents personally responsible for their progress—regardless of the obstacles they face. The focus on self-responsibility is wrapped in appealing ideas like empowerment, choice, and independence. These messages promote a cheerful narrative of self-determination and personal skills—ignoring reality and selling the illusion that women can “achieve anything” if they just try harder. On the surface, these messages seem encouraging, but when examined closely, they reveal much more. By addressing women as entrepreneurial actors and using slogans like “show your power” or “break the chains,” a false assumption of a level playing field is made, while the structural barriers that exclude women—especially the less privileged—are ignored, blaming them for supposedly being “less daring.”
These tools are not limited to political participation. They are also prevalent in economic empowerment efforts, where “empowerment” is reduced to training workshops, microloans, or cash assistance—tools that remain within a superficial framework and fail to address the systemic structural inequalities that deepen the gaps.
This kind of discourse has helped reinforce the traditional divide between the public and private spheres. Every electoral cycle could have been an opportunity to reaffirm that issues like domestic violence, reproductive rights, unpaid labor, social protection, access to education and healthcare, and more—are inherently political issues that should be addressed in broader political frameworks. But these issues are largely absent from discussions on political participation. Focusing on them could have widened political analysis and led to more comprehensive solutions to gender inequality.
Yes, I am deeply concerned about today’s public discourse. It distorts the conversation around women’s issues and threatens the feminist agenda as a project for democracy, citizenship, and social justice—an agenda for all women, not just middle-class feminists. A feminist agenda that recognizes the participation of women who actually build society, maintain its resilience, and actively engage in its structures to keep it alive. Women who exist in all public spaces, not just in the ones we choose to acknowledge. An agenda rooted in grassroots mobilization—starting from the people, speaking with them, not about them, using tools and language close to them, and resisting all forms of elitism and power.
I understand that diversity is richness, and that movements are never monolithic. But I feel the need to reflect on many questions:
How can all women, not just the elite, determine how to confront exclusionary structures without having their issues hijacked?
How can we regenerate a discourse on women’s participation born from daily experience and the pain of women untouched by institutional or donor agendas?
How can we reclaim a feminism that works from the ground up, speaks with women, not about them, avoids pre-packaged empowerment narratives, and reflects the reality of marginalized, exhausted women? One that says we don’t just need to demand seats—we may need to reshape the table itself.
What tools do we need to offer a different vision for political participation—one rooted in daily struggles, economic insecurity, and real-life concerns—that frees the discourse from elitist centrality?
How can we reclaim the concept of intersectionality, not just as a buzzword, but as a method for understanding all power relations and oppressions affecting women—not just those who “look like us”?
How can we restore the political and activist dimension of empowerment by identifying our issues, understanding their components, highlighting their interconnections, moving away from tallying how many women reached leadership positions, and instead listening to women’s experiences in difficult conditions, analyzing the stories they share, and learning from them? How can we produce a discourse that is not horizontal, fragmented, or afraid of its own identity?
How can we move beyond momentary rhetoric that disrespects the past and fears the future—a rhetoric that mirrors the uncertainty we are going through?
Isn’t it our duty to resist the official and party narratives that reinforce dominance, rather than challenge it—to reaffirm that quotas are not isolated mechanisms, but part of broader electoral reforms, and that personal status laws are one of the main reasons women are excluded from public life?
And many more questions.
I don’t know why I wrote all these words.
Maybe it’s because I’ve come to realize—now more than ever—that longing is inseparable from politics.
Yes, I’m anxious. But it’s the kind of longing that never stops looking for ways to remember a father—who was the first feminist in my life.
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