June 4th marked the conclusion of the Indian Lok Sabha elections. Some opinion polls were proven correct, while the others became a stock of jibe as people of the republic finally discovered who won and who lost the elections. Yet, the chatter about win and loss revolved around the name of parties, leaders, and castes, while another equally important determinant of social development was left to oblivion.
People glued to their television sets noticed the rise and fall of the political parties’ vote shares and their seats in the Parliament. However, seldom noticed and discussed the cold shoulder that the political landscape has been giving to women. Of all the Lok Sabha candidates we saw or heard from on the mainstream media platforms, only a handful had been women. This lack of representation and participation of women leads to inadequate policies for women in the country.
What does the data say?
Thanks to media websites, I captured the information about the winners of the Lok Sabha elections. Also, I noted the people who ascended the dais on June 4th to take their oath alongside the Prime Minister. The data about the presence of women in each of these emerged to be quite unsettling. Here is a state-wise breakdown of the number of women Members of Parliament (MPs) following the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Do you notice something?
Out of 37 states and union territories of India, 15 do not have a single women MP. This translates to only 60 percent of the states having women MPs.
Some people may opine that this does not reflect how overrepresented or underrepresented women are in Indian politics. So, here is another chart to help understand the proportion of women MPs in each state as a percentage of the total number of MPs elected from each state.
No state or union territory, except Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Tripura, has a dominant representation of women in Lok Sabha elections. This low representation of women is a function of less participation of women in politics, less affinity of people to vote for women candidates, and limited access to education among women leading to a lack of skills to run for political office.
All in all, only 13 percent of the MPs are women.
What also warrants attention is the fact that despite 72 women getting elected to Lok Sabha, of which 28 are from the majority party, only 8 women have been chosen for ministerial positions.
Only 7 percent of ministers who took oath with the newly elected Prime Minister are women, while 17 percent of Ministers of State are women. Also, no woman sits as a Minster of State with independent charge.
With such a state of affairs of representation of women where only 72 (13.56 percent) women take seats in the temple of democracy in India, one can easily fathom the magnitude of attention that may be given to women-centered policies and legislations in the next five years.
Why are women missing in politics?
Thirty years have passed since the amendments in the Indian Constitution reserved one-third of the seats for women in local administration. Today, 44 percent of seats in local bodies are held by women and 20 states have increased reservations in the Panchayati Raj institutions to 50 percent (Kumar and Ghosh, 2023). Such inclusion of women through constitutional amendments is necessary for bringing women’s perspectives into policymaking. However, the reality is much more than that.
India has dropped to 129th place in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index 2024.
Despite some strides in economic participation and education, the country still lags in political empowerment and representation of women, ranking 65th. The numbers tell the story: only 6.9 percent of ministerial positions and 17.2 percent of parliamentary seats are held by women, highlighting the ongoing challenges in achieving gender equality in politics (Economic Times, 2024).
Participation of an individual in politics depends on the person’s education level and awareness of the importance of politics. In India, women’s access to education has historically been limited, which has impacted their participation in politics. While there have been improvements, many women still lack the education and skills needed to run for office. According to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2020 report, 5.5 percent of children aged 6-10 and 15.9 percent aged 11-14 were not enrolled in school (Pratham, 2023), affecting future women’s representation.
What should not be a surprise is that women are underrepresented in political parties, facing gender bias and the perception that they are less electable than men. For example, Kerala’s communist leader KR Gouri Amma had once confessed that she faced “extreme harassment” from the make leadership during the 1960s and 1970s while working with the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Additionally, women in politics often face violence and harassment, creating significant barriers to their participation and deterring them from political engagement.
There is much more than what meets the eye in the elections. It is not that women are disinterested in politics, even the political infrastructure creates hurdles for women more than for men. The system of getting a party ticket is a highly centralized process, and research by political scientist Kanchan Chandra found that women who get party tickets and win parliamentary elections have family political connections or are dynastic politicians (Ghosh, 2023). Moreover, election campaigns in India are extremely demanding and time-consuming, which makes it difficult for a woman to contest elections along with managing family commitments and childcare.
Furthermore, in the era obsessed with social media, women in politics face 27 times more abuse than their male counterparts (Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, 2021).
Since the political arena is often marred with slander, abuse, violence, and mudslinging, women hesitate from political participation for fear of humiliation and loss of reputation. Structural inequalities, resilience of internalized patriarchy, and financial constraints in fighting elections also deter women from politics.
We need institutional reforms
When women are absent from politics, they would end up being absent from policies as well. There is no point in having a political sphere where half of the population remains largely underrepresented. What we need urgently is to make it mandatory for every registered political party to allocate one-third of their election tickets to women. This would require amending the Representation of People Act, 1950, which needs political consensus—obviously, a significant challenge. In case this approach fails, reviving the Women’s Reservation Bill 2008, which mandates reserving one-third of parliamentary and state assembly seats for women, could be the next step.
More women in politics are essential for balance, fairness, and better governance. Research by Thushyanthan Baskaran et al. shows that women legislators outperform their male counterparts on economic indicators, are less likely to be corrupt, and are more effective (Thushyanthan et al., 2018). Yet, many successful women politicians feel like an ‘ineffective minority’ due to male-dominated party structures and patriarchal mindsets that hinder their ability to obtain party nominations.
Gender budgeting has been operational for 18 years, but it still only accounts for 4-5 percent of total budgetary expenditure and less than 1 percent of GDP. Critical schemes like the Jal Jeevan Mission are missing from the gender budget, and there’s a shortage of high-quality gender-disaggregated data to assess the impact of targeted expenditure towards women’s empowerment. In the past five years, India’s gender budget has remained between 4-6 percent of total expenditure and under 1 percent of GDP.
And a bit of feminism is critical in the entire gameplay. Men have to learn to take orders from women if they have been elected by their constituency to the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha. Simply denying a woman’s capability to run ministries and an entire government is akin to undermining the strong foundations of democracy that women have established over the past 76 years of independence. Nothing says that more women in politics will translate to better policies for women. However, if we do not get the perspectives of women presented in the Parliament in the first place, then there won’t be much hope left to build policies that are centered on women and that consider the special needs of women in a democracy. Certainly, the public sector schemes that aim to empower women will not improve with time, leading to a loss of relevance of policies for women and eventual decline in the quality of women in the country.
Final thoughts before we act…
So here I rest my case. Unless we bring more women to the fore in politics, it will be extremely challenging to make Indian politics a level-playing field for women. The exclusion and marginalization of women’s representation in politics is an anathema to democratic ideals and therefore, women need to be in politics to make meaningful progress in the fast evolving global landscape.
References:
1. Kumar, S., & Ghosh, A. K. (2023). Lessons from 30 years of women’s reservation in panchayats. Observer Research Foundation. https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/lessons-from-30-years-of-women-s-reservation-in-panchayats
2. PTI (2024). India ranks 129th on Global Gender Gap index, Iceland on top: WEF. The Economic Times. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/jobs/hr-policies-trends/india-ranks-129th-on-global-gender-gap-index-iceland-on-top-wef/articleshow/110931099.cms?from=mdr
3. Pratham (2023). Annual Status of Education Report (Rural) 2022. https://img.asercentre.org/docs/ASER%202022%20report%20pdfs/All%20India%20documents/aserreport2022.pdf
4. Ghosh, A. K. (2023). Women’s Representation in India’s Parliament: Measuring Progress, Analysing Obstacles. Observer Research Foundation. https://www.orfonline.org/research/women-s-representation-in-india-s-parliament-measuring-progress-analysing-obstacles
5. Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (2021). Online violence against women parliamentarians hinders democracy, and all parliamentarians are responsible for addressing it. https://www.uk-cpa.org/news-and-views/online-violence-against-women-parliamentarians-hinders-democracy-and-all-parliamentarians-are-responsible-for-addressing-it
6. Thushyanthan Baskaran et al., “Women Legislators and Economic Performance,” IZA Discussion Papers, No. 11596, 2018