Sops not enough, give a third of poll tickets to women
United Nations Women, a UN organisation dedicated to women’s empowerment, says, “Women’s political participation is a fundamental prerequisite for gender equality and genuine democracy.” The goal is some way off in most parts of the world today. In India, political parties have started wooing women voters in a more focused manner than earlier. This is because a rise in women’s voting percentages has meant that they have a greater influence on election outcomes. Political parties have been increasingly designing schemes targeting women. They have recently been offered job reservations, monthly cash payments, free scooties and mobile phones, and subsidised cooking gas and electricity.
The BJP has perhaps been the most focused in this respect. The party’s biggest move was to pass the women’s reservation bill to reserve a third of Lok Sabha and state assembly seats for women, a legislation that had been in the works for long. The law is a major step towards addressing the endemic problem of the near-absence of women from decision-making positions. Women’s wider participation in political leadership is expected to go a long way in addressing long-lasting issues such as lower wages and far fewer jobs. Unfortunately, the passed law needs a number of conditions to be met before it can be implemented—including the delimitation of constituencies. This exercise can be done only after conducting another population census. This pushes the law’s effective implementation by at least another five years.
The country has seen a sharp rise in women voters over the last decade, with 2019 marking the first year they overtook men in nation-wide voting percentages by a small margin; then the margin grew at the 2022 state polls. Despite all this, their empowerment remains a dream. It is time for political parties to move from merely offering sops to a more meaningful engagement. While all parties supported the reservation bill, none of them gives more than 10-15 percent of their election tickets to women. Allocation of a third of their tickets to women could be a good start for the parties to end discrimination in the name of winnability. The increased participation of women in decision-making will usher in more gender-sensitive public policies and go a long way in ensuring equality.