In the long-suffering law on “Equal rights for women and men”, the recommendation to replace the word “gender” with the word “sex”, respective Committee of the National Assembly rejected. Yesterday, the Committee on Protection of Human Rights of the National Assembly gave a negative decision to the bill proposed by Heghine Bisharyan, according to which all the words “gender” in RA Law on Equal Rights of Men and Women shall be replaced to the word “sex”. The sudden aversion in separate layers of the society to the word “gender” became infectious, and the RA Law on “Equal Rights of Men and Women” adopted this year, in May, became the target of broad layers of the society, they began to accuse the authors of the law in attempts of perversion of the public. They began to call the Law on Perversion, a “hooligan” law, that this is the first step, and it will be followed by the adoption of laws on providing privileges to homosexual marriages and so on. Succumbing to such pressures, a number of amendments are provided for in the law to avoid such misunderstanding of the words. And Mrs. Bisharyan’s initiative was one of them. However, the government, represented by the Deputy Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Filaret Berikyan present at yesterday’s committee meeting, was strongly against replacing the word “gender” with the word “sex”. Mr. Berikyan even brought an example of how absurd the expression “gender relations” will sound, if all of a sudden it becomes “sexual relations”. He repeated several times that the purpose of the law is putting an end to discrimination only to women by the law, which our country has pledged to do still in 1993, by signing respective International Convention. “Aravot” asked Mrs. Bisharyan why she decided to come up with the following recommendation. She confirmed that the reason were the opponents of the Law on “Equal Rights of Men and Women,” their constant complaints, “We met with criticizing side, who were claiming for the word gender to be removed, we sent our proposal to the government to remove the word and replace it with the word “sex”. The Government suggested working together for the amendment of the law, we worked, but we did not achieve common conclusion. The government seems to be going to removing the expression “acquired behavior” and to be limited with it, whereas our proposal to replace with the word “sex” received a negative conclusion.” To our question, “And don’t you find that these words, indeed, are not equivalent, they do not replace one another?” Mrs. Bisharyan replied, “The word ‘gender’ has many explanations, it is explained in the law as a social aspect related to the gender, but if you say “sex”, it will not have to be social, it is specifically about sex. I must say that discontent and opponent parties should submit recommendations. Now, my proposal came out of circulation with a negative conclusion, the government should bring its recommendations, I do not know when it will happen. Let these opponents turn to the National Inspectorate of Language, let them suggest a more consistent and complete word in the meaning, and if such proposal is available, I am ready to come up with a new proposal to making amendments in the law, for only to dispel the concern that certain layers have.” To our question whether this law with important provisions, which has been eight years since it was circulated and was finally adopted in May this year, in fact, because of one word, perhaps, unfounded, if we believe the government representative, would be continually stoned, Mrs. Bisharyan replied, “In 2005, the draft of RA Law on “Equal Rights of Men and Women”, which was put into circulation by the Rule of Law party faction, pursed the goal to draw the attention of all sectors of our state: the executive, the legislative, local government, judicial, civil, etc., and demanded equal rights for women. Today, although the Election Code requires that every sixth on the list of political parties should be a woman, we see that the political parties write down women, but as there is no law prohibiting it, then they remove them from the list, and men replace them. Even the requirement of EC is not fulfilled, and this law is necessary to recognize women’s rights everywhere and to eliminate discrimination against them. In our country, women make 65-70 % of those having higher education, but they are not involved in the management affairs of the state, we do not have a woman governor, just two minister, very few village mayors… Our goal was to solve this issue. Then, the government brought a similar project, and we developed ours, later the government developed, and eventually it became a joint project, and after so many years of development, it eventually became a law. It remains to work only on concerning provisions.” Filaret Berikyan, at yesterday’s committee meeting, said that some of the speakers against the law are fulfilling an order, to our question whom he meant, Mrs. Bisharyan replied, “He was saying that the Pan-Armenian Parent Committee was formed a few months and targeted this problem, and maybe he meant just it, but I think that we need to focus on the law, we should not label people, it’s better to eliminate the problems in the law to extract the concern. There are people who believe that there is a perversion hidden under the law and discredit the authors, whereas it has absolutely no connection with the truth, our purpose of this law is to establish only equal rights.” If they are only speculations, how should we get out of this vicious chain? To this question, the co-author of the RA Law on “Equal Rights for Women and Men” responded, “We do not have the right to ignore the opinion of the people, even if they are few of them. The public is with the public awareness. Due to lack of awareness, people think that this law is a “bugaboo”, but if we work hard, inform, open the provisions of the law, explain the objectives, they will understand and will change their opinion.”
Melania BARSEGHYAN
