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    Women Political Participation.

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    Shubh Mathur
    While India has made progress towards gender equality and women's empowerment, women remain underrepresented in politics. Of the 545 members of the Lok Sabha, only 78 (9%) are women. Similarly, only 9% of state legislators are women. Several factors contribute to the low level of women's political participation, including patriarchal cultural attitudes, son preference leading to unequal status of women, and gender bias within political parties. Increasing women's representation in politics could boost economic growth and advance policy issues important to women. More needs to be done to implement the women's reservation bill and make politics more inclusive and representative.

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    Women Political Participation.

    Uploaded by

    Shubh Mathur
    75 views2 pages
    While India has made progress towards gender equality and women's empowerment, women remain underrepresented in politics. Of the 545 members of the Lok Sabha, only 78 (9%) are women. Similarly, only 9% of state legislators are women. Several factors contribute to the low level of women's political participation, including patriarchal cultural attitudes, son preference leading to unequal status of women, and gender bias within political parties. Increasing women's representation in politics could boost economic growth and advance policy issues important to women. More needs to be done to implement the women's reservation bill and make politics more inclusive and representative.

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    my reasearch unpublished article on women political participation in India.

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    women political participation.

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    While India has made progress towards gender equality and women's empowerment, women remain underrepresented in politics. Of the 545 members of the Lok Sabha, only 78 (9%) are women. Similarly, only 9% of state legislators are women. Several factors contribute to the low level of women's political participation, including patriarchal cultural attitudes, son preference leading to unequal status of women, and gender bias within political parties. Increasing women's representation in politics could boost economic growth and advance policy issues important to women. More needs to be done to implement the women's reservation bill and make politics more inclusive and representative.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    75 views2 pages

    Women Political Participation.

    Uploaded by

    Shubh Mathur
    While India has made progress towards gender equality and women's empowerment, women remain underrepresented in politics. Of the 545 members of the Lok Sabha, only 78 (9%) are women. Similarly, only 9% of state legislators are women. Several factors contribute to the low level of women's political participation, including patriarchal cultural attitudes, son preference leading to unequal status of women, and gender bias within political parties. Increasing women's representation in politics could boost economic growth and advance policy issues important to women. More needs to be done to implement the women's reservation bill and make politics more inclusive and representative.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 2

    Feminisation of Indian Politics: Long Way To Go

    In the Democracy Index released recently, India’s position has plummeted to 51 out of 167 countries. One
    of the indicators used to measure the state of democracy is political participation in which India has
    scored an abysmal 6.67 justifying the label -‘flawed democracy”.

    Female political participation is an important indicator of women empowerment in a country. While India
    can boast of a universal adult franchise and near-equal participation of women in the electoral process, it
    is worrisome that women participation in politics is paltry - of the 545 members of Lok Sabha, 78 are
    women representatives out of which only 3 have been elevated as a cabinet minister. Of the total 4118
    MLAs, a paltry 9 percent are women. The critical state of affairs become apparent when the numbers are
    juxtaposed with 23 countries of the world which have women at the helm.

    Economic Survey of India 2017-18 highlighted prevailing cultural attitudes regarding the roles of women
    in society as the main reason for low women participation in politics. Patriarchal society has given them
    little agency when to start or stop having children. Further, son’s meta preference among people has
    created a situation of “unwanted” girl child which has a cascading effect on their lower socio-economic
    status and warrants urgent reflection by the society.

    Political parties, for long, have followed a gender exclusionist policy in granting tickets to women,
    attributing it to women’s lack of “winning ability”. The myth stands busted on the ground of factual
    reality which reflects in the winning percentage of women in 2014 elections- 9 as compared to 6 of men.
    The low proportion of women in inner-party lines further denies them a chance to lobby and garner
    financial and human resources to meet people’s demand and aspirations. This leads to women being
    perceived as weak representatives and incapable political leaders.

    Seldom have the governments seen women as a distinct community and articulated interests around
    gender injustices. Since 2014, only two among numerous bills passed by the parliament have been
    women-centric. The women reservation bill is another testimony to the point. Originally introduced in
    1996, it continues to languish in the parliament and has faced serious criticism from leading political
    parties. The point put forth by the opposing party is that the opportunity will be cornered by the upper
    caste, urban elite women and not make the politics truly inclusive, which is, to an extent, a fair argument.
    Various studies have shown that those women in the mainstream politics in India have been mainly
    political or urban elite.

    The social values intrinsic to equal political participation are uncontestable. But now, research undertaken
    by United Nations University has proven that there are also economic benefits that come with it. The
    researchers found the constituencies which elected a woman with small margin had an annual GDP
    growth rate 1.85 percentage points higher than those led by a male legislator. Explaining the correlation,
    they said that women are less likely to be corrupt which translates into greater attention to economic and
    social development. Moreover, women in the political arena help advance both the range of policy issues
    and the types of solutions that are proposed. Using extensive research on the behaviour of women in
    legislatures all over the world, it is extrapolated that not only are female legislators likely to vote for
    issues of concern to women, but they are also more likely to sponsor women’s issue legislation.
    Kofi Annan expressed, “study after study has taught us, there is no tool for development more
    effective than the empowerment of women. No other policy is as sure to improve nutrition and
    promote health, including the prevention of HIV/AIDS. No other policy is as powerful in increasing
    the chances of education for the next generation.” It is high time that women be given a share in
    Indian politics to meet development goals. It can be done by reconsidering reservation bill for
    women in state as well as central legislatures by bringing in the views of all the stakeholders so that
    disadvantaged and marginalized section of the women can also brag their place their righful place in
    the politics. But the law reforms can only do the half job; it is for the society to stand up. Ecosystem
    should be provided for the women to realize their rights to equality, health care, education economic
    security and political power. Political parties must bite the bullet by reserving a section of party
    tickets for women in elections and setting the right precedent.

    These steps can go a long way in helping India move up the ladder of democracy Index by making
    our politics more inclusive and representative.

    Referrences-

    1. Thomas, M. (2018, June 8). Female politicians are better for the Indian economy. Retrieved from
    https://qz.com/india/1297248/indias-female-legislators-are-better-for-the-local-economy/

    2. Pepera, S.(2018, Feb 28). Why Women in Politics? Retrieved from


    https://womendeliver.org/2018/why-women-in-politics/
    3. (2018). Social Infrastructure, Employment and Human Development, Economic Survey. (pp 173-
    175). Retrieved from http://mofapp.nic.in:8080/economicsurvey/pdf/167-
    185_Chapter_10_Economic_Survey_2017-18.pdf
    4. Rai. 2017. Women’s Participation in Electoral Politics in India. South Asia Research Vol. 37(1):
    58–77. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0262728016675529
    5. Srivastava, R. (2011). The Indian Journal of Political Science, Vol. 72, No. 2 (April - June, 2011),
    pp. 409-420. https://www.jstor.org/stable/42761426
    6. Saiia, S. & Aruah, A. (2012). The Indian Journal of Political Science, Vol. 73, No. 2 (April - June
    2012), pp. 273-282. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4156590
    7. Rosa Linda T. Miranda. (2005). Impact of women’s participation and leadership on outcomes.
    Retrieved from https://www.iknowpolitics.org/sites/default/files/ep.7_rev.pdf

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