Her right to legislate

Quotas for women in legislatures are welcome, but not a panacea

The argument for women’s quota in legislatures arises from their lack of representation in Parliament and state legislative assemblies. Women make up half of India’s population and nearly half its electorate; in the 2019 general election, more women voted as compared to men. Yet, their representation in the Lok Sabha and assemblies is abysmally low. Less than 15% of the Lok Sabha MPs are women, the figures aren’t any better in state assemblies. The global average for women legislators is 26.2%. The 1992 Panchayati Raj legislation took up the challenge of representation and reserved one-third of the seats in local bodies for women. Today, 50% of seats in local bodies in 20 out of 28 states are reserved for women. After a period when mostly proxies were fielded, this has facilitated the emergence of a new generation of confident and capable women leaders. However, parties rarely field them in assembly polls or the general election. The Constitution (128th amendment), 2023 Bill seeks to reserve up to one-third of seats in the Lok Sabha, all legislative assemblies and the legislative assembly of the National Capital Territory of Delhi, and up to one-third of seats reserved for SC/STs in all these legislatures for women, in an attempt to correct this anomaly.

The timing of the bill proposing the quota, a year ahead of the national election, is significant(Sansad TV)

Unlike in the past, there is a political consensus in favour of the quota proposal. Clearly, no party today, including those that consistently opposed previous attempts to pass such a law, wants to be seen as anti-women. The timing of the bill proposing the quota, a year ahead of the national election, is significant (as is the fact that it was the first order of business in the new Parliament building), although implementation could take a while. In its current form, the Bill has proposed the quota for a period of 15 years, which would have to wait for the Census and delimitation exercises to be completed. This means a long haul since even the Census process, already delayed by two years, is yet to start.

But reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and legislative assemblies should not be seen as a panacea. To truly empower women, there have to be, in parallel, efforts to break barriers for them in accessing education, health, employment, and economic opportunities that aren’t just structural, but also to do with mind-sets.