BISHKEK: Aida Kasymalieva, Kyrgyzstan’s youngest female member of parliament, was stunned when her male colleagues walked out as she spoke at a session on women’s issues in a nation rife with domestic violence, child marriage and bride kidnappings. Kasymalieva knew these issues weren’t a priority in the Kyrgyz parliament having reported as a journalist for over 10 years on women migrants, child marriage and the often brutal abduction of young women who are then forced into marriage. But Kasymalieva, 33, was surprised by the total disregard for issues impacting women in the majority Muslim country in central Asia bordering China that is home to about six million people. “We were discussing assignments, grants, roads, and all men were sitting in the hall then the parliamentary hour (on gender issues) started … and all men in the hall just stood up and went,” Kasymalieva said during an interview in her apartment in Bishkek, where she lives with her 11-year-old daughter. “Men will never think about domestic violence, kidnapping.” But while she does not expect the attitude of male lawmakers to change in a hurry, Kasymalieva believes having more women enter politics is necessary to bring about the changes they need. In 2005, the Kyrgyz parliament was made up of only men but a gender quota was adopted after various campaigns and the law now requires that women make up a third of party candidate lists. Currently Kyrgyzstan has 23 women among its 120 MPs, according to Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) data, all of whom are members of the Forum of Women MPs, a multi-party caucus founded in 2011 that has been credited for putting women and girls on the political and legislative agenda. This has helped address such issues as domestic violence and bride kidnapping which persist despite being criminalized in 2013 and tougher sentences of up to 10 years in jail introduced. The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in a 2015 report said it was “deeply concerned that bride kidnapping appears to be socially legitimized and surrounded by a culture of silence and impunity and that cases of bride kidnapping remain underreported”. It said there had been only one conviction for bride kidnapping since 2008 even though searches on YouTube find numerous film of distraught women being dragged away in broad daylight by uninvited suitors. Official statistics on bride kidnapping do not exist but studies suggest that up to half of all marriages in Kyrgyzstan resulted from bride kidnapping and one-third are non-consensual. UN Women cites data from 2013 from the NGO Women Support Centre, which said there were at least 11,800 cases of forced abduction of women and girls every year in Kyrgyzstan, with more than 2,000 of those girls reported being raped as well. With cultural and societal views slow to change, Kasymalieva said much needs to be done to change attitudes toward women. Published in Daily Times, October 26th 2017.