Neither the Islamist nor liberal parties fielded a significant number of female candidates on their lists in the recently held parliamentary elections, a report revealed.

The report, issued by a program at Nazra for Feminist Studies, showed that the average Islamist party list was made up of 16 percent female candidates, while “civil” parties — often considered more liberal — averaged 17.5 percent women on their lists.

In its report, Nazra’s Academy for Women’s Political Participation program investigates why so few women were successful in their bid for parliament and explains how few women ran in the first place.

Very few female candidates ran in the nation’s parliamentary elections and even fewer have been elected: 10 took the oath last Monday.

Eight women elected and two appointed women make up less than two percent of the 508 seats in the powerful lower house of parliament. Considering the proportion of women who applied, the chances weren’t big. In the capital for example, only 80 women ran compared to 1,010 men.

Echoing the concern that parties were playing politics early on was Omaima Kamel, one of the newly elected parliament members under the Freedom and Justice Party. “Women are put to fulfill criteria on the list,” she said, explaining that parties were worried women won’t have a positive impact on the lists in terms of attracting voters.

The remarkable revelation of the Egyptian revolution concerns women. It turns out that the women of Egypt are at the heart of our politics.

Since January 2011, a new wave of recognition for women’s political leadership and dynamism has swept the country. It began with female bloggers who inspired action through their words, and continued with hundreds of thousands of women from all over Egypt standing side by side with men in the streets and in Tahrir. Ladies also launched clashes between Copts and Muslims by their choices of lovers and religions. There are also the activists who have maintained a plethora of popular protest movements against military transgressions for the rights of the dead and injured and on behalf of unlawful detainment and torture in prisons.

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Yet women are near absent from this parliament. There are eight women who have succeeded in winning seats and two who have been appointed. That means that two per cent of parliament has gone to women. The world average for female representation in elected legislative bodies is 19 per cent and the Arab world average is 13 per cent.

A group of men gathered around Amira El Bakry in Tahrir Square as she brandished a newspaper photo that shocked many Egyptians. It showed troops dragging a female protester along the street, her robe ripped open to reveal a blue bra and bare midriff.

“Is this OK by you?” the 25-year-old El Bakry, her voice shaking with anger, asked the men, as they squinted at the picture and one suggested the protester was trying to cause a scene. Later, El Bakry marched through Tahrir with thousands of women to condemn the brutality and demand that Egypt’s military rulers step down. Some at the Dec. 20 rally wore tight jeans tucked in boots, others were in flowing robes and full-face veils. “The women of Egypt are a red line,” they chanted.

The scene recalled the mass protests of a year ago, also joined by women of all ages and backgrounds. El Bakry supported those efforts to topple Hosni Mubarak, yet she’s worried about the new political order too. Mubarak-era army chiefs are running the country, and Islamist parties with traditional notions of women and their rights are poised to win elections that end this week. “That could be a lose-lose situation for us,” she said. “But we have a role to play, and we’ll have to keep fighting for it.”