Violence against Women in Politics on a South Asian scale
Violence Against Women in Politics (VAWIP) occurs frequently in different contexts and manifests itself in numerous ways. This write up aims to highlight particular examples of VAWIP in different countries of South Asia. Thus it highlights the importance of ensuring the universality and urgency of addressing this particular issue.
Afghanistan
In the second presidential election held in Afghanistan in 2009, widespread cultural opposition to women in public life, further compounded by the lack of security, made campaigning by women candidates very difficult or impossible in many parts of the country. Topics concerning women's rights were virtually never featured in news coverage of the electoral campaign, and women received almost no coverage in news reporting during the election, according to a European Union observation mission report. The monitoring group found that in many places people was being issued multiple voting cards, which voting cards were often issued for children, and that stacks of voting cards were given to men who falsely claimed that they were for women in their households.
On 9th March 2010, the upper house of the Indian Parliament, the Rajya Sabha, passed the bill on the reservation of 33 percent seats in the Lok Sabha, for India’s women representatives. This has been hailed as a historic step towards a constitutional amendment that would ensure significant representation of the women of India, in the parliament. Currently, a population of almost 500 million Indian women, is represented by less than 60 elected representatives, ... 
