NEW DELHI: Women voters set to play crucial role in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls with their larger participation. In the past, women voters might have been marginalised in politics, but, the 2014 polls set a different tone seeing a large number of women voters coming out and in nine states percentage of women voters surpassed the male voters.
Experts say that the trend is going to continue in the 2019 polls when more women will come out and vote. Even during the revision of electoral rolls, women expressed their desire to participate in the electoral process and current election commission data disclosed about a significant rise in the number of women electors from 39.7 crore in 2014 to 43.17 crore in 2019.
Sanjay Kumar, Director, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies said, “Looking at the past data it looks like that women turnout is going to be reasonable very high in 2019. Even in recent state polls, women turnout was higher than male in many States. Over the past few years the gender gap in voting has narrowed down.”
From college students to great-grandmothers, they came out in droves to vote, taking women turnout to the highest ever among all Lok Sabha Elections in the 2014. “It was the emergence of a new constituency: Women. In the past, women voters might have been marginalised in politics, it has been said, because they tended to vote in lower numbers than men. In the 2014 Lok Sabha Elections, more women than ever before come out to vote, in clear awareness of the fact that their vote does matter. The gender-wise pattern of voting in the 2014 elections was path-breaking,” said an analysis note of the Election Commission prepared 2014 poll results.
In the overall voter turnout – from 58.19 per cent in 2009 to 66.44 per cent in 2014 – at the all-India level, there was a remarkable closing of the gender gap between men and women voters: at 1.55 percentage points (compared to 4.42 in 2009), it was the lowest ever to date. The percentage of male turnout was 67.00 per cent, while 65.54 per cent female voters cast their ballot.
The last Lok Sabha polls threw another remarkable fact that in some States, the percentage of women voters surpassed that of men voting. According to Election Commission, this was not such a new phenomenon in States in the North– East such as Manipur, Meghalaya and Sikkim, but it was definitely happening for the very first time in States such as Bihar, Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Uttarakhand. The process had been unfolding in the post-2009 phase of the Assembly elections in different States. About 55.8 percent of eligible female voters had cast their votes in 2009, compared with 58 per cent of total registered voters. Prior to 2009 the narrowest gender gap was in 1984-85 at 5.31.
High turnout of women voters has also reflected in government policies as many flagship schemes including Ujjawala were launched by this government in last five years. “All political parties have started paying attention to this fact. Look at the government policies in last five years. So, parties have noted the high turnout of women voters,” said Sanjay Kumar.