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| From agropedia |
India has seldom been generous
towards its womenfolk. In 1990 Amartya Sen spoke about the scandalising number
of missing women in India because of the Indian preference for male children. Soon
researchers estimated that more than 65 million women were missing from the
country’s population. In such a country where women are not even allowed to be
born, or not allowed to grow up after birth, what is women’s status in electoral
politics?
The first
answer is that the political system is skewed in favour of men if only because the
absence of 65 million voters translates as 20 percent of the country’s missing electorate.
The situation has continued to be worrisome for years. Last year UNFPA’s State
of the World Population report
said that one in three girls missing globally due to sex selection, both
pre- and post-natal, is from India. That’s tragically ironic for a country
which creates new slogans for women’s security year after year.
What comes as
a consolation is that the sex ratio of voters [number of women voters to every
1000 men voters] in India has increased from 715 in the 1960s to 883 in the
2000s. Even in the states which used to keep women confined to the backyards –
such as Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and UP] – the electoral situation showed
remarkable improvement. Also the representation of women in the Lok Sabha rose.
The 16th Lok Sabha had 66 women and now the 17th one has
78. That’s not much when we compare ourselves with our neighbours such as
Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal all of which have better women representation in
their parliaments. Bangladesh has 50 women out of 350 members, Pakistan has 69
out of 342, and one-third of Nepal’s parliament is feminine. Even African countries
are much better than India in this regard.
The Deve
Gowda government introduced a bill in the parliament for reservation of 33% of
seats for women in both parliament and state assemblies. But the bill was never
passed. We are not as women-friendly as our slogans make us out to be.
One
interesting observation made by a group of researchers who brought out a book, Difficult
Dialogues, is that Indian women aren’t too keen to enter politics especially
if they live in better-off conditions such as in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. It is
women from backward places who are more willing to contest elections.
Be that as it
may, women perform better than men when they are in power, according to the
study which led to the composition of the above book. The types of public goods
provided are better where women are in power. There are more women and child support
policies when women have the power. More importantly, corruption is much less when
women hold the reigns.
Considering
these facts, it would be good if India can pass the Women’s representation bill
and give more political power to them. Apart from all the benefits listed
above, we may also have less bigotry and violence too as an additional
blessing.
PS. ‘This post is part of #CauseAChatter with Blogchatter’
Hari OM
ReplyDeleteHear! Hear! This is a global issue, it must be said, though not equally spread. It has been my observation (and only that, not researched) that since oor wee Nicola took over the reins in Scotland, there has been a rise in the number of women prepared to stand for election and in the recent polls, our gender balance hit 45% women. There are those who would claim this is due to all sorts of campaigning for openings and such like... but that only works if there are women prepared to step up to the plate; I think having a female leader is a positive trigger for women to believe they can make a difference politically... YAM xx
That should be true: when a woman is the leader, more women will rise to top positions.
DeleteNot an easy piece to read but by the end of it, I am left feeling hopeful.
ReplyDeleteThank you Tomichan for writing with such clarity and compassion.
This is one of the easiest problems for any leader to tackle. If it's still continuing it's because of lack of political will.
Delete