CHENNAI: From refrigerators to coupons for buying home appliances and competitive offers for monthly cash assistance, the upcoming Assembly elections in the state is no different than any of the recent ones in the way major parties are trying to pander mainly to woman voters, who outnumber men, in their manifestos.
However, such enthusiasm is heavily absent when it comes to the same parties providing more opportunities for women to climb up party ranks and fielding them as candidates.
Woman voters are increasing at a slightly higher rate than men in TN. As per the latest electoral rolls, they accounted for 51.07% of the total electorate of 5.67 crore, compared to 50.7% in 2021. They now outnumbered men in 215 of the 234 Assembly seats.
Moreover, TN often takes pride in the fact that its women account for 43% of the country’s roughly 15 lakh women working in industries. However, it often forgets that with only 12 woman MLAs, women accounted for just 5% of its 234 MLAs in the Assembly that got elected in 2021 — the lowest since 2001.
Ironically, 2021 saw 413 women in the fray and accounted for 10.3% of the 3,998 candidates, the highest ever in Tamil Nadu. It is because of a majority of woman contestants were from smaller parties, with the Naam Tamilar Katchi significantly driving up their number since 2016 by allotting 50% of its seats to women.
Sadly, the party is yet to get a single candidate elected. Major parties like the DMK and AIADMK whose candidates almost fill the entire elected Assembly however fielded only 11 and 17 in 2021 respectively. The national parties were no different. Congress had one woman in 25 seats it contested while BJP had three in their 20 seats.
For the upcoming election, the DMK and AIADMK have nominally increased their woman candidates, with the former fielding 18 and the latter 20. Progressive parties like the Left and the VCK, which came under fire in 2021 for not fielding even a single woman candidate, have fielded a total of three in 18 seats.
A senior political functionary acknowledged that candidate selection still remained overwhelmingly male-dominated, shaped by entrenched notions of ‘winnability’, access to finance, and long-standing patronage networks. Women are often fielded in unwinnable constituencies or reserved constituencies, as token candidates rather than earnest attempts at representation.
A few decades ago, the Gita Mukherjee committee recommended that political parties should give at least 15% reservation to women in the administrative apparatus. As far as political parties in TN are concerned, the major parties rarely have women as district secretaries, considered among the most powerful posts.
Although the late CM Jayalalithaa appointed 66 women to the AIADMK’s executive committee, and five years later, increased the number to 73, still many could not grow to become district secretaries. Although she implemented 50% reservation for women in local bodies during her tenure, it has been a consistently pointed out that many of these women remain figureheads while their husbands or fathers act as the de facto elected representatives.
The parties have so far failed to ensure representation on their own. The hope now rests on the 106th Amendment to the Constitution, passed in 2023, for the 33% reservation. While the union government earlier said it will come into force only after the Census and delimitation exercise, there are now reports that it may consider advancing its implementation.