PAK, CHINA SCORE OVER INDIA IN WOMEN REPRESENTATION

Nearly a century has passed since the first time an Indian woman voted to elect her representative in British India: it was in Madras in 1920. With universal adult suffrage in 1952 and granting 33 per cent reservation to women in rural local bodies in 1993, has come a long way over the last century.

However today, India lags its neighbours and peers when it comes to women’s representation in national legislatures, an analysis of global data shows.

Proportion of elected women representatives in the Indian Lok Sabha touched its peak at nearly 12 per cent in 2014. At 24.9%, China has more than twice the representation. While Nepal elected thrice as much women to the national legislature than India, Pakistan’s situation is nearly as that of China, with twice as much female representatives (See chart 1).

Evidence shows that quotas are a surely proven way of ensuring political gender balance. Countries without quotas had lower representation than those that mandated at least 30 per cent women’s representation.

Those that sought parity — half of the seats for women — had the best representation, a report ‘Women in parliament in 2018,’ from the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), a global organisation of national parliaments, said.

In countries without reservations to women, the proportion of women representatives was 18.6 per cent in the lower house (or in the case the country doesn’t have two legislative chambers) and 16.2 per cent in the upper house.

In countries with reservation, it rises to 27.7 per cent and 36.1 per cent, respectively. Where parity is mandated, it improves to 29.3 per cent and 47.1 per cent, respectively. “There are marked differences in the average share of women elected in legislatures without quotas, compared to those that require at least 30 per cent women. These differences are greater when measures stipulate gender parity,” IPU noted.

Praveen Rai, a political scientist at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies told Business Standard, “The main reasons for women’s exclusion is systemic failure and patriarchal fault lines in existing party system. Parties file on stereotype belief that politics is the domain of men,” he said. He added that the opening of party gates to men with criminal records further deterred women from politics.

Regional political parties such as Trinamool Congress and Biju Janata Dal have committed to fielding women in a third of seats they contest in 2019 elections. The Congress has promised to bring back the women’s reservation bill, which was scuttled in 2010.

Global comparison shows though women’s share in Parliament improved from 8 per cent in the 12th Lok Sabha (1996-1998) to 11-12 per cent in 20142019, the gap with RoW is at its widest in at least 20 years (See chart 2).

Global agencies have pointed out underlying socio-economic conditions, which then translate into imbalance in political representation on the surface.

In 29 of 150 countries analysed by the World Economic Forum in its Gender Gap Report (2018), women spend twice as much time on unpaid work, housework, household care, than men. But in Japan, Korea and India, the time spent on house work is five times that of men. India is among the only four countries, where sex ratio at birth is below 910, the WEF paper shows. For 75 per cent of the countries, 944 females are born per 1,000 males.

Though women candidates nearly doubled over the last two general elections, male candidates have grown by nearly 50 per cent in 2004-2014.

As a result, the proportion of women candidates remained 6-9 per cent in the last three general elections, data of Association for Democratic Reforms, a public advocacy, shows (see chart 3).