WOMEN AS ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES

WOMEN AS ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES

All this is well known. Yet issues related to women’s well-being or otherwise are not given adequate attention. This has led many feminists and women’s movements to the conclusion that unless women control power, their problems will not get adequate attention. One way to ensure this is to have more women as elected representatives.

In India, the proportion of women in the legislature has been very low. For example, the percentage of elected women members in Lok Sabha has touched 14.36 percent of its total strength for the first time in 2019. Their share in the state assemblies is less than 5 percent. In this respect, India is among the bottom group of nations in the world (see the graph below). India is behind the averages for several developing countries of Africa and Latin America. In the government, cabinets are largely all-male even when a woman becomes the Chief Minister or the Prime Minister.

One way to solve this problem is to make it legally binding to have a fair proportion of women in the elected bodies. This is what the Panchayati Raj has done in India. One- third of seats in local government bodies – in panchayats and municipalities – are now reserved for women. Now there are more than 10 lakh elected women representatives in rural and urban local bodies.

Women’s organizations and activists have been demanding a similar reservation of at least one-third of seats in the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies for women. A bill with this proposal has been pending before the Parliament for more than a decade. But there is no consensus over this among all the political parties. The bill has not been passed.

Gender division is an example that some form of social division needs to be expressed in politics. This also shows that disadvantaged groups do benefit when social divisions become a political issue. Do you think that women could have made the gains we noted above if their unequal treatment was not raised in the political domain?

This cartoon offers an understanding of why the Women’s Reservation Bill has not been passed in Parliament. Do you agree with this reading?

Activity:

1.  Could you think of some reasons why women’s representation is so low in India? Do you think the Americas and Europe have achieved a satisfactory level of women’s representation?

2.  If casteism and communalism are bad, what makes feminism a good thing? Why don’t we oppose all those who divide the society on any lines – caste, religion or

gender?

Source: This topic is taken from NCERT TEXTBOOK