English abstract
The study aims to uncover the role of social institutions in women's political representation support. More specifically, the research intends to investigate the role of family, tribe, community and sablah as either supporting or retarding women in their quest for political representation; i.e. the main objective is to show the effect of these factors in the election process of Majlis Ashura. The research is descriptive, analytical and depends on the social survey of the whole population together with quantitative and quantitative data analyzing methods. Focus group discussion is also used to gain deep information.
The research came up with very important results the most important of which are: the high level of the relative strength index of the social institutions in supporting women political representation. The nature of their relative support is arranged from high to low strength as follows: candidate's family, tribe, community and finally, society's acceptance of the candidates.
The results also show that there are significant statistical variations between the variables of monthly income, job, residential area, period of candidacy, and number of candidacy and between social institutions. Moreover, it showed that there is no statistically significant correlation between age, educational level, marital status, place of residency and number of successes. The results were used for making practical suggestions for better electoral performance of Omani women in the future.
