Media Campaign for increasing women’s participation at the 2010 Parliamentary Election

WMC organized an extensive media campaign in order to raise awareness about the limited representation of women in the Sri Lankan political arena and to increase women’s participation at the 2010 Parliamentary Election. Newspaper advertisementswere published in leading Sinhala, Tamil and English language newspapers highlighting the fact that although 52% of the country’s population consists of women, only 6.6% were granted nomination at the previous Parliamentary election.WMC also took a novel step during this media campaign by launching a movie theater advertisement campaign in which the aforementioned facts were reiterated through slide shows that were displayed before each show at 25 movie theaters from around the country. The campaign was carried out during the last month leading up to the election.The week before the election, WMC spearheaded yet another media campaign in which advertisements entitled “Give Your Preferential Vote to a Woman Candidate” were published in leading Sinhala, Tamil and English language newspapers. The advertisements also listed the women candidates from the three leading political parties (UPFA, UNP, DNA) and their respective candidate numbers.