“Although we speak proudly about democracy in this country, there is very little democracy inside our political parties,” says Kanaka Abeygunawardena, Convenor of the Gender and Elections Working Group which advocates for women’s participation in politics.

Undemocratic and patriatchal political party structures, a preferential vote-focused electoral system that requires more financial resources to run campaigns, stereotypical roles imposed on women and deeply ingrained socio-cultural barriers hold women away from politics.

Women make up more than 50% of the student population across all universities in Sri Lanka. Even after such efforts to educate women, confining them to the kitchen would be a waste of the country’s resources, says Abeygunawardena.

She unpacks the issue of poor women’s representation in politics here, in the first of CIR’s four-part series on women’s representation and election disinformation with SHE Digital.

Click below to watch the full video