New Delhi: When Nagaland got its first women legislators – Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party’s Hakani Jakhlu and Salhoutuonuo Kruse – this month, it caused a wave of jubilation as another northeastern state, Tripura, crossed another milestone put a bit
The results of the Tripura assembly elections announced on March 2 showed that 15 percent of the winners in this state were women – and this is the highest proportion of their victories in any state assembly or Lok Sabha election during the last 25 years.
While this 15 percent—nine legislators in a house of 60—may not seem like a significant number in itself, it is significant in terms of women’s representation in legislatures.
ThePrint looked at Election Commission (EC) data on 150 state assembly elections and six Lok Sabha elections (excluding bypolls to state assemblies or Lok Sabha) over the past 25 years to analyze how different state assemblies How women are represented in the U.S., and how that has changed.
This ThePrint analysis shows that out of a total of 21,161 MLAs (re-elected MLAs are counted separately each time) elected during the last 25 years across all states and union territories, only 1,584 were women. This means that more than 92 percent of all MLAs elected during this period were men.
The same analysis also found that the average proportion of elected women in assembly elections held between 1998 and 2023 has remained stable between 7 and 9 percent.
However, when it comes to the Lok Sabha, there has been a steady increase in women’s representation during the past 25 years, from just 43 MPs out of 543 elected in 1998 to 78 in 2019, or 14.4 percent. Has been.
Incidentally, Nagaland’s total number of women legislators matches the number of women MPs the state has ever elected to Parliament – just two since 1963.
So what are the factors that may explain this poor representation of women and what can help improve it? ThePrint’s analysis found that potential indicators such as the education and sex ratio, size of the House, or even the presence of a woman leader at the helm of politics, often fail to influence such results.
Sanjay Kumar, professor at the Center for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) and co-director of Lokniti, a research program run by it, said, “There are certain sections among voters who are not inclined to vote for women candidates.” They are because they believe that if a woman is elected, she would not be as good a representative to represent their interests in the state assembly or the Lok Sabha, but this is not the root cause.’
According to Kumar, the Women’s Reservation Bill, which proposes to reserve one-third of the total seats for women in Lok Sabha and Assemblies, would guarantee a minimum level of participation of women in electoral politics. But this bill, passed by the Rajya Sabha in March 2010 itself, is yet to be brought in the Lok Sabha even after 13 years.
Speaking to ThePrint, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) Rajya Sabha MP Fauzia Khan from Maharashtra said, “Women have always been at the forefront of service. Whatever be the crisis, women have been at the forefront (in fighting it). Sadly, deeply entrenched historical, cultural, socio-economic barriers prevent women from making their place at the decision-making table – so that resources and power can be distributed more equitably.’
Khan further said, ‘They (women) have always been in the lowest paid jobs and have been working in many very insecure forms of employment. Multiple audits have shown that women have never occupied more than six per cent of leadership roles. Therefore, we should think about it.
‘Parties do not give tickets to women in large numbers’
Until the milestone crossed by Tripura this month, it was only Haryana (2014 assembly elections) and Chhattisgarh (2018 assembly elections) that elected the highest proportion of women legislators in the past 25 years. The figure for both the states was 14.4 per cent.
This is especially important for Haryana, which according to the 2011 census had the worst sex ratio (number of females per 1,000 males) of 879 among all Indian states.
In comparison, Karnataka, which goes to polls this year, has consistently fared poorly in this regard. The state’s best figure was in 2018, when it elected seven women legislators—only 3.12 percent—in the 224-member House.
The condition of some northeastern states is even worse. While Nagaland has elected its first two women legislators this year, Mizoram has only had four women legislators elected in its entire electoral history. Three of them were elected before the 25-year period analyzed by ThePrint’, and the remaining one MLA won his seat in a 2016 bypoll. In the year 2018, the result of the last assembly elections of the state came out in the form of an all-male (representation of men only) house.
The percentage of women elected to the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly (before the state was bifurcated into the union territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh in 2019) was also significantly lower (between 2.3 and 3.5 per cent) during the period analyzed by ThePrint. Had been.
However, experts agree that the problem is not that fewer women are being elected, but the real issue is that too few women are contesting elections.
Kumar said, ‘In India, votes are cast on the basis of political parties and not all parties give tickets to women adequately. If women contest elections as independents, their winning potential is greatly reduced.
She further said, “The basic reason why parties do not give tickets to women candidates in large numbers is that they feel that it will be difficult for women to win elections.” If the parties do not give tickets, then women do not get elected to the state assemblies and the Lok Sabha. In certain constituencies, women candidates also find it difficult to get elected due to the money and muscle power used by the male members of their constituencies.’
Perhaps for this reason, political analyst Rasheed Kidwai feels that being associated with a political family, at least initially, helps women candidates.
“What worries me the most is that women activists are not able to come forward at the grassroots level,” Kidwai told ThePrint.
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Increased literacy, good sex ratio, having a woman chief minister etc have also failed to guarantee representation
There are no clear indicators of what helps improve the representation of women in electoral politics.
Take Assam for example. During its last four assembly elections, the proportion of women legislators has steadily fallen from 10.3 per cent in 2006 to 4.7 per cent in 2021.
A research paper titled ‘Political Representation of Women in Legislative Assembly Elections of Assam’ prepared by three scholars from Assam was published in the journal ‘WJARR’ last year. It cited several possible reasons for the limited presence of women in state politics: such as low literacy rates (66.27 per cent in the case of women as per the 2011 census), burden of household chores and low participation in the workforce (see the text of this research paper). less than 40 per cent as per).
But if literacy is a factor, then even the most literate state does not paint a good picture. Kerala—which has an overall literacy rate of 94 percent (92 percent for women) according to the 2011 census, as well as the highest sex ratio (1,084)—has only 11 (7.86 percent) women legislators in a house of 140. .
Similarly, Mizoram, with only four women legislators in its history, has the second highest female literacy rate at 89.27 per cent as per the 2011 census.
Then, does having a woman chief minister help? The states presented mixed figures in this regard.
In Tamil Nadu, for example, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AID MK) sent the largest number of its women legislators to the assembly between 1991 (when J. Jayalalithaa first became chief minister) and 2016 (when she died). Sent. The 1996 election—which was won by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK)-led front—was an exception.
In contrast, in the 2021 election—the first after Jayalalithaa’s death—the AIADMK sent only three women legislators to the assembly, while the victorious DMK sent six to the house.
However, Delhi’s record under Sheila Dikshit, India’s longest-serving chief minister, has been quite the opposite. The union territory elected nine women legislators in 1998—the year Dikshit became chief minister—its highest number in 25 years, but this number declined over her next two terms, to just three in 2008 . The total number of members in the Delhi Legislative Assembly is 70.
According to Kidwai, the women at the top do little to help their ‘co-travellers’.
He says, ‘Most of them (women CMs) maintain the power structure in line with the patriarchal system. Women leaders have to act like men, with more ruthlessness and no nonsense. They do very little to promote the representation of women.
Kidwai said, ‘Even in matriarchal societies like Kerala and the Northeast, the political representation of women is very poor.’
Emphasis being given for Women’s Reservation Bill
Among the larger states—those with more than 100 members in their legislatures—Uttar Pradesh has shown the most improvement in terms of representation of women in its legislature. In this state with a 403-member assembly, 47 women legislators were elected in the year 2022, increasing from 26 women legislators elected in the year 2002. Maharashtra has shown the second best improvement in its 288-member assembly, going from electing 12 women legislators in 1999 to 24 in 2019.
ThePrint’s analysis shows that there has been a lot of improvement in Gujarat under the leadership of former Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
The number of women legislators in Gujarat increased from four in 1998 to 2002—which was Modi’s first election as chief minister and he had already become chief minister in 2001 after being selected by the BJP leadership to replace Keshubhai Patel—in It was 12. Of the 12 women legislators elected to the Gujarat Assembly that year, eight were from the BJP. Although Modi resigned as chief minister in 2014 to become prime minister, the trend has continued: Gujarat elected 15 women representatives to its 182-member assembly last year.
Meanwhile, the states formed in the new millennium present different records.
After being carved out of Madhya Pradesh in 2000, Chhattisgarh elected its own assembly in 2003 with six percent women legislators. The Madhya Pradesh Legislative Assembly in the same year had eight percent women members. However, in the latest election in 2018, where 14.44 per cent women legislators were elected from Chhattisgarh, the figure for Madhya Pradesh was only 9.13 per cent.
On the other hand, in Telangana, which was carved out of Andhra Pradesh in 2014, the percentage of women legislators has come down from 7.56 per cent to 5.04 per cent during the last two elections – in 2014 and 2018. Andhra too, saw a decline from 10.29 to 8 percent between 2014 and 2019.
A woman leader from Telangana, K. Kavita – who is a Legislative Councilor (MLC) of the ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi – has been trying to highlight the issue of poor representation of women in legislatures. Earlier this month, she also sat on a day-long hunger strike at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, demanding the passage of the long-pending Women’s Reservation Bill.
Kavita says, ‘If India needs to develop at par with other countries of the world, women should be given more representation in politics.’
(Translation: Ram Lal Khanna | Editing: Rishabh Raj)
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