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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.
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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.
