Issue no.: 7 | June 2010

Through gendered Lens

Women's Reservation Bill in India

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, out of the 545 Lok Sabha seats. If this bill is implemented, the number of women representatives would increase three times to 181. Despite severe opposition and threats from several UPA allies, news of dissatisfaction amongst the members of the BJP party who originally pledged support to the bill, and the appearance of a lack of strategy on the part of the ruling UPA, the bill was passed on March 9th by the Rajya Sabha. There was much to cheer for the women of this country, despite the shocking witnesses of misdemeanor of several MPs who opposed the bill, on the previous day.

As the Bill was passed, female lawmakers and activists shouted “we have made it” outside parliament soon after it passed Tuesday night in New Delhi. While proponents say the bill will increase women’s participation in politics and contribute to one of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, critics say it favors wealthy women and encourages powerful men to substitute daughters and wives as political proxies.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the 186 to 1 vote was a “historic step forward toward emancipation of Indian womanhood.” The vote came a day after International Women’s Day, which saw more than 70 demonstrations globally to protest for women’s empowerment in jobs and government.

Many people question whether or not reservation at the topmost level of governance is necessary and will achieve the desired results of increasing women’s empowerment. The parallels are drawn with caste based reservations implemented in educational institutions and government jobs in this country. The argument against any reservation per se is that it compromises with the quality and merit. While some amount of reservation is necessary to empower the backward sections of society and bring them at par with the privileged sections, reservations are generally perceived as detrimental especially in the higher positions, where individuals should be admitted purely on merit and not any other social parameter.

Equally, a strong perception remains that quotas actually stigmatize communities, and that individuals who find themselves in positions of power through reservations feel discriminated and inferior to those who are from general categories. So reservation does not result in real empowerment. It has also been pointed out that women are increasingly finding themselves in high jobs in the corporate and business positions, without reservations. In these cases, women have been able to break stereotypes and compete with men, and have not needed any aid through reservations.

Women perform very well and often excel their male counterparts in level playing fields where merit is key to success. It is true that we find iconic role models amongst women in different corporate jobs and other high end professions. But politics is a different arena and not a level playing field.

In politics today, money and muscle power are key to success. India’s political scenario does not present an atmosphere where a number of women can excel, without an active collective effort to promote their participations. In fact it is well known that in India’s freedom struggle, particularly in the Indian national Congress under the leadership of Gandhi, women took part as actively as men. However, barring a few, most women were marginalized from participating in the government, post independence. Their representations in legislation were far lower than the numbers who participated in the actual freedom struggle.

62 years post independence, women representation is still hovering at around 11 percent, with only 59 of the current 252 seats held by the majority party in the current Lok Sabha, significantly lower than the average of 17 percent all over the world. This is despite the fact that women candidates have higher success rates in Indian elections. It goes on to show that without active affirmative action, the representation of women who constitute 50 percent of the population will not significantly increase in the years to come.