Women & Politics

Political equality includes not only equal right to franchise but also more importantly, the right to access to the institutionalized centers of power. Thus, political participation of women means not only using the right to vote but also power sharing, co-decision making and co-policy making at all levels. The active participation of women in political sphere is integral to empowerment of women and helps to build a gender-equal society as well as to speed up the process of national development.

India, the most populous country in the world, widely known for its democratic tradition, being led by a woman prime minister for nearly a decade and presently with a women president, unfortunately stands very low when it comes to representation of women in elected decision making bodies.

If one looks at the election statistics, one can find that women have been an active participation in the election process. Across various elections, out of the total votes caste, women had constitutes 50 percent. But shockingly, even though they form half of votes cast in election, their representation is very meager in the supreme decision making bodies such as the Lok sabha, Rajya sabha and the legislative assembly.

On the other hand, representation of women has been high in the local bodies. But this has happened only because of the fact that 33% of seats have been reserved for women in the local bodies.

Women’s participation in the Kerala legislative Assembly ranged only between 0.7% to 9.2%. The highest percent of women participation was observed in the 1996 elelction (9.5%). In the subsequent elelctions ie. in 2001 and 2006, we could see a sharp decline in their representation (5.0-5.7%). Studies had highlighted that though a greater representation and tendency to contest were high in the tenth election, the policy of rotation of reserved seats has gone against the interests of members of reserved constituencies. To be specific, the rotation of reserved seats between wards decreases the women’s chance to become re-elected.

Despite reservation, decentralization and people’s campaign a scanty trend was observed with regard to the participation of women in the decision making process. Reports showed that the major obstacle for women’s participation in the political arena in the Kerala society is the male dominance. Yet another impediment were the lack of support from the party, as they tend to prefer men for the open seats. Further more, when selecting the women for the reserved seats, the parties took advantage of the political background of the women’s families. This leave woman as mere ‘token’ to defend male interests hence she will not be able to pursue her own issues. Above all, the triple role in which the women are burdened with both the domestic work, rearing of children and the political work kept aloof from politics. (Women’s Political Participation in Kerala, Sara Anderson, Susanne Bohman, 2001). Nonetheless, in Kerala, even though women’s social status has improved much higher it has not yet translated into political empowerment.