Empowering Women in India
I want to contest in the Lok Sabha when I grow up!
It has been in the news, early last month, that India has passed a Women's Reservation Bill that reserves one-third of Lok Sabha (Lower House in Parliament) seats for women, the bill having been tabled soon after International Women's Day. It seemed weird that such a bill needs to be passed in a country as democratic as India. Women have held or are holding powerful positions in India, from Indira Gandhi when she was Prime Minister from 1966 to 1977 and 1980 to 1984 to Pratibha Patil, current President of India and Sonia Gandhi, current leader of the Congress party that is in power. But that does not equate representation of women or by women.
As I read in Outlook magazine about how the bill will empower Indian women (Outlook is a news magazine published weekly, the equivalent of Time or Newsweek in India. I bought a copy of the magazine when I went to India), the statistics are quite unflattering. Women consist of only 11% of India's Parliament, compared to neighbours Pakistan (22%) and Afghanistan (27%), both Muslim-majority nations that give the uninformed the impression that women are under-represented in government. Even compared to global averages, 11% is much lower than the 19% world and Asia average. The number of women in the Lok Sabha has increased over the years but it is still low, hence Sonia Gandhi's justification to push through the bill this time round as leader of the party in power.
Such a bill would obviously be vehemently supported by women, but that appears not to be the case. According to the same Outlook article, some of India's earliest women MPs were against bills like these because it seemed to insult women's "intelligence and capacity" - i.e. neglect that women can and should be admitted into government on merit. This is the line of argument that many countries (Singapore included, though women are slightly better represented in Singapore: 23% in Parliament) use when countering propositions that women be represented in greater proportions in government: practice meritocracy - we should not let women into government for the sake of representation, but because they are willing and able to do so. But this seems to run counter to what people think with regard to racial / religious quotas: when it comes to representation by race / religion, there is a scramble to ensure proportional representation. This then seems unfair to women: are they really that undeserving of a chance to govern?
Already one-third of seats in Parliament are reserved for scheduled castes / scheduled tribes (SCs / STs, e.g. Dalits), so one-third of the seats for SCs / STs also have to be reserved for women. Of the initially unreserved seats, one-third is to be carved for women, hence the billl works such that 181 of the 545 seats are to be reserved for women, on top of the 122 reseved for SCs / STs. Women however can also choose to contest in an unreserved seat. The bill also works such that the reserved seat rotates to different constituencies, such that in 15 years each and every Lok Sabha seat would have been represented by women at least once, since during elections every 5 years one-third of seats are reserved for women. This bill is scheduled to expire 15 years after it is in place, whereby presumably by then women would be able to fight for their own seat to represent their constituency in government based on merit.
The benefits of the bill are pretty obvious: giving women a chance for their voices to be heard. "Softer" or "women's issues" would be championed, for instance "equal wages, health, nutrition and education for women and the girl child". Another article in Outlook magazine suggested through case studies how having women in power might bring about "enlightened" policies in development, focusing on education and public health, issues that women tend to be more concerned with given their experiences in caring for the family and raising the children, especially in a country with a patriarchal society like India.
To oppose such a bill, then, would seem to be insane, given that one is at once seen to be against women's rights. The two major parties in India, Congress and the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, came together to support the bill while parties representing disadvantaged communities in Parliament opposed the bill. These parties stress that they opposed the bill not because they did not want to empower women, but because they wish to see a sub-quota for women of other backward castes (also known as OBCs, these communities might not be Dalit or under the SCs / STs category but are still disadvantaged) or Muslim women, given that Muslims are grossly under-represented in the Lok Sabha.
Still, it is promising that such a bill has managed to pass in India, given that women in India generally face more oppression and have less opportunities than their counterparts in other democratic countries, and hopefully time will indicate that it was a wise decision for the Lok Sabha to pass such a bill.
For a detailed yet succinct account of the politics behind the women's reservation bill, Coomi Kapoor's article in The Star, republished with some edits in mypaper, is a good reference.