A Comparative Study on the Representation of Sri Lankan Women in Politics and the Private Sector

Abstract

Although Sri Lankan society is considered male dominated, there is special honor attributed to women since ancient times and since of late, equal rights and privileges are granted to women. Yet, in the current society, more women tend to be employed in the private sector rather than exerting their rights of being engaged in politics. This study examines as to why women show an interest in employed in the private sector as opposed to being a political representative, although Sri Lankan women have the opportunity and privilege to do so. At the same time, the researcher proposes recommendations to overcome this tendency. Both primary and secondary data were used for this study. However, one of the limitations of the study is the inability to extract full information regarding political behavior of people. It was found out that more than being a political representative by obtaining a party membership, Sri Lankan women tend to engage in private sector employment. In fact, the representation of Sri Lankan women is high in several fields of the private sector. Some of the reasons identified to be deterrent towards women engaging in politics are: the current image of politicians and the negative attitude prevalent towards politics, the discrepancies in the political culture of Sri Lanka and Sri Lankan society being patriarchal.