With assured backing from India's main opposition groups, the ruling Congress party hopes to see voted through in the upper house of Parliament Monday a bill reserving 33 percent of seats in national and provincial legislatures for women.

"The timing is right just now,’’ says Ranjana Kumari, a prominent proponent of the bill and president of Women Power Connect, an influential lobby of some 700 women's organisations and individuals that trains women with support from the United Nations Development Programme’s Democracy Fund.

"The quota was very important in the previous elections because we live in a male-dominated society and the quota was necessary to give women a chance to have a political role," al-Douri told The Associated Press at the offices of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in the Shiite slum of Sadr City, where the prayers were held last week.

"But in the future this quota should be removed and women should compete equally with men, because women politicians have proven their competence and reliability in politics," said al-Douri, who is running for a second term on the slate of al-Sadr's party.

According to Pew Research Center Social and Demographic Trends survey of 2,250 American adults conducted from June 16 to July 16, 2008, "What the public does not say is that women inherently lack what it takes to be leaders," Live Science quoted Pew analysts, as stating. "To the contrary, on seven of eight leadership traits measured in this survey, the public rates women either better than or equal to men,” they added. For example, the most important leadership trait according to the respondents is honesty. And half of all adults surveyed said women are more honest than men, while just one-in-five indicated men are more honest.

Welcoming the government’s decision to introduce the Domestic Violence Bill in the forthcoming assembly session, Athwaas, an alliance of women from Ladakh, Kashmir and Jammu, has underlined the importance to put up the bill on General Administrative Department’s official website for public comments.