Annex B – Attitudes to Women’s Rights (Questions with the high non response rate) EQUAL RIGHTS WITHIN THE FAMILY It is alarming that in the 2019 survey, 87.8% of the respondents either refused to answer or could not provide a definite response when asked if they believed women should have the same rights as men in the family. This phenomenon makes it challenging to infer deductive conclusions about the participant’s perception of equal rights for women in the family. More women (49.3%) in comparison to men (44.7%) refused to respond and reported not knowing an answer. The non-response rate of urban inhabitants was much higher (94.5%) when compared to the outer islands (83.7%). This high rate of non-response and inability to provide a definite point of view is an extremely significant drawback for women’s rights. EQUAL RIGHTS FOR WOMEN ON CUSTODY MAT‐ TERS The majority of people chose not to respond to this question or reported not knowing how to respond, resulting in a response of just 12.2%. This in itself is a worrisome trend as there has already been a drastic drop in support for women’s equal rights on custody matters in courts from 92.5% in 2005 to 39.2% in 2011. EQUAL RIGHTS FOR WOMEN IN DIVORCE Owing to divorce, broken families are one of the biggest root causes of social issues in the country. The Maldives also has the highest divorce rate in the world and thus women’s rights issues around this social problem have remained a great concern1. Regrettably, the question regarding equal rights for women during the dissolution of a marriage was also met with a high non-response rate where 80.1% refused to answer this question or reported that they did not know the answer. The non-response rate to the question must be considered a statement in itself. EQUAL RIGHTS FOR WOMEN TO AND AT WORK Similar to other questions in this segment, more 1 https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/ highest-divorce-rate/ than half of the respondents chose not to answer the question and over a third responded by saying they did not know the answer. As stated previously, it is extraordinary that questions regarding attitudes towards equal rights for women show a high rate of non-response in comparison to all of the other questions in this survey. EQUAL RIGHTS FOR WOMEN IN POLITICAL PAR‐ TICIPATION Although important legislative guarantees to overcome gender imparity are enshrined in the Gender Equality Law (2016), challenges to equal representation of women in political participation persist. As a result, while only 35% of the cabinet are women, only 4 out of 87 seats in the Parliament of Maldives are held by women. In a recent development, for the first time in the history of the nation, the President of the Maldives appointed two female justices to the Supreme Court bench of seven after parliamentary approval. Out of the 134 magistrates, only 7 are women and just 3 female judges preside over the lower and appellate courts.221 out of 71 deputy ministers are women and where there have been 50 state minister appointments, a mere 12 are women.3 Only 36 female councillors were elected to office in the last local council elections alongside 653 males.4 When people were asked how they felt about the right to equal representation of women in public office, they responded positively in both 2011 (80.5%) and in 2005 (79.9%) However, 2019 shows a complete shift in attitudes towards women’s representation in public office, with only 8.4% agreeing with this statement. Out of the few people who responded to this question, men favoured this view more (14.75%) than women (5.01%). Since the enactment of the new constitution, three parliamentary elections have been held. 2 3 4 http://www.judiciary.gov.mv/judge-related.html https://presidency.gov.mv/Pages/Index/158 https://www.lga.gov.mv/councils 91