Low Representation of Women in Legislatures

In News: While releasing a postage stamp on late Smt. Eashwari Bai, Vice President called for consensus over reservation for women in Parliamentary elections.

Key Highlights of Vice Presidents speech

• Need of reservation for Women: Although the 17th Lok Sabha has the highest number of 78 women members, they account only for 14% of the total number.
  • Reservations for women in the local bodies have politically empowered lakhs of women in the country.
• Way Ahead for Healthy Democracy: Mantra for a healthy democracy is to discuss, debate and decide (3Ds) and not disrupt.
  • He highlighted need of building consensus on multiple topics like
    • Matters of National  importance like the country’s security.
    • Eliminating corruption and ensuring social justice.
    • Reforms to accelerate development, eliminate delays, diversions and dilutions in delivery of schemes and reaching out benefits to the needy.
    • Empowering people, promoting transparency and accountability in the system
    • Mutual respect between Ruling and Opposition Parties.
• Code of conduct for Parties and their members, particularly public representatives.
  • People should elect their representatives on the basis of 4Cs:
    • Character,
    • Conduct,
    • Calibre
    • Capacity,
  • Unfortunately, another set of 4Cs: Cash, Caste, Criminality and Community is trying to hold politics hostage.
• Role of Youth: Vice President also appealed to the youth to enter politics with a missionary zeal to serve the needy and poor in the society.

Need/ Benefits of Reservation for Women

• Constitutional Right to Equality: Socio-Economic Equality can’t be sustainable without Political Equality.
  • Further Article 15 and Article 16 allow Positive Descrimination or Affirmative Action by state.
• Redistribution of Resources: Political reservation has increased redistribution of resources in favour of the groups which benefit from reservation.
• Experience of Local Bodies: A study about the effect of women reservation in panchayats shows that women elected under the reservation policy invest more in the public goods closely linked to women’s concerns.
  • For example, in Rajasthan and West Bengal, for instance, increased female political representation in local bodies led to more investment in drinking water and roads.
• Gender equality and sensitivity: A 2008 study, reveals that a sizable proportion of women representatives perceive an enhancement in their self-esteem, confidence and decision-making ability.

Women Reservation Bill:

• 1993 & 1994 : The 73rd and the 74th constitutional amendment acts granted women 1/3 reservation in rural and urban democratic bodies.
  • It was the first time the idea for reservation in Parliament gained prominence.
• Sept 1996: The Women’s Reservation Bill was initially introduced in the parliament.
  • The bill was introduced in Lok Sabha by the United Front government of HD Deve Gowda.
  • The main aim of this bill is to reserve 33 percent seats in Lok Sabha and all state legislative assemblies for women.
  • Reservation Criteria:
    • As per the bill, the seats will be reserved on a rotational basis.
    • The seats would be determined by a draw of lots in such a way that a seat would only be reserved once in every three consecutive general elections.
• 1998: NDA-I introduced the bill without any success.
  • Thereafter, the Bill lapsed and was reintroduced – in 1999, in 2002 and 2003.
• May 2008: UPA-I government, led by Congress, again introduced the bill to reserve seats for women in Lok Sabha and legislative assemblies in May 2008.
• March 2010: After its reintroduction, the bill was passed by Rajya Sabha, but was still left pending in Lok Sabha.
  • A few regional parties like and RJD, Samajwadi Party (SP) has been one of the vocal opponents for the Women’s Reservation Bill.

Concerns Raised Against the Reservation

• Sarpanch Pati: Many Panchayats saw the advent of Sarpanch Pati (Husband of Sarpanch) who were actual power holders instead of females. Thus, there was no major Socio-Political change.
• Mandatory reservations will not address deeper imbalances of power: Inexperienced candidates will struggle to raise funds for their campaigns, defend the interest of their constituencies, and ultimately stand little chance of being re-elected.
• General quota would favour upper caste and class women: It would compete with claims of other minority groups and infringe on existing quotas for Other Backward Classes, Scheduled Castes and Tribes.
• Lack of education and leadership training: A survey found that female panchayat heads to be less acquainted with the functioning of the Panchayati system than their male counterparts.
• Lacks social capital: Since women are not integrated in any local political process initially, and, unlike men, are not part of the relevant social and power networks, women leaders are prone to inefficiencies.

Conclusion

• Although from criticism it may seem that reservation didn’t yield expected results but in many cases women Sarpanchs started asserting themselves.
• Further a new breed of young enthusiastic women emerged who became pall bearers of change. Thus reservation for women in legislature can be a good proposition.
• The reservation may be first provided for State legislative assembly elections and later extended to Parliament.

Source: PIB