In 1960, Sirimavo Bandaranaike became Sri Lanka’s first woman prime minister – and the first female prime minister in the world – after entering politics and taking over leadership of her husband’s party after his assassination. Once in high office, Bandaranaike proved highly adept in navigating the complex and male-dominated political landscape – something equally true of other women leaders, including her daughter Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, who became the president of Sri Lanka in later years. However, their political journeys were often enabled by male family members who were career politicians. These women leaders’ mode of entry into politics, based on family legacies, did not lend itself to creating more space for women in politics at the grassroots level.
Even when they have benefitted from articulate and competent women politicians in their ranks, Sri Lanka’s political parties have typically not allowed them key decision-making or leadership roles. It is for this reason that the elevation of Harini Amarasuriya to the office of prime minister in September, after the victory of Anura Kumara Dissanayake in the country’s recent presidential election, is significant. The National People’s Power (NPP) – a coalition of civil society groups and trade unions organised around Dissanayake’s party, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) – nominated Amarasuriya to a seat in parliament in 2020, when she was a senior academic. This was already notable, as it was evidence of a conscious move by the NPP towards greater inclusion and representation of women.
In recent years, many women who do not have family political links or legacies have entered Sri Lanka’s politics laterally, just like Amarasuriya. These women have entered national-level politics not by joining political parties at the grassroots level and working their way up, but by earning prominence and influence through their work in other party-linked organisations and movements before stepping into the political arena. The last woman to rise through the ranks from a party’s base and secure a significant ministerial position was Renuka Herath, who became the minister of health in 1989. Amarasuriya’s appointment to the second-highest decision-making position in the government has to some extent challenged the patronising and exclusionary attitude towards women that has historically prevailed in Sri Lankan political parties.
The NPP’s ascent to governance followed on the heels of mass anti-government protests in 2022, which marked the delegitimisation, in the eyes of the Sri Lankan public, of the political class that had dominated the country’s two-bloc party system for decades. Despite not organising or actively leading the 2022 protests – popularly known as the Aragalaya – the NPP mobilised voters with its demands for “system change” to secure victory in this September’s presidential election. Ideologically, the NPP has projected a progressive centre-left policy stance distinct from the Marxist-Leninist leanings of its core political party, the JVP. In the lead-up to the presidential vote, both in parliament and beyond, the NPP spoke consistently against corruption and political impunity. It appealed to the aspirational middle classes and rural masses, and mobilised diverse demographic groups such as women, youth, professionals and farmers to consolidate its electoral prospects.