The panellists also discussed the curious case of Tamil Nadu, which scored well in women’s development indicators, but had a poor performance when it came to women in politics.
A hundred years after the women of Tamil Nadu won the right to vote with the 1921 Justice Party Women’s Suffrage Resolution, how do women fare in the state’s political sphere today? Are they well represented and do they have equal opportunities in the public sphere in the state? A panel of women who are leading in various disciplines held a webinar on Sunday, December 4, to discuss ‘Women in the Public Sphere’.
The webinar was organised by the Dravidian Professionals Forum, founded by Tamil Nadu’s Finance Minister Palanivel Thiagarajan, and had the women panellists discuss various challenges faced by women in politics and how society can become more inclusive.
The panellists were Tara Krishnaswamy, author and activist and co-founder of Shakti, a non-partisan women’s collective; Kalpna, a professor from IIT Madras; Congress MLA Sowmya Reddy; Carole Spary, a professor at the University of Nottingham; and Priyamvadha Vijayakumar, Consultant Editor, India Today. The discussion began with the panellists speaking about significant underrepresentation of women in Indian politics and barriers to their participation.
In her presentation, Tara Krishnaswamy observed the curious case of Tamil Nadu where women fared very well when it came to social development indicators. Tara highlighted uncommon development and education indicators such as number of women PhD holders per crore, number of women post graduates per crore, number of women with bank accounts, amount they have in bank accounts etc. In all of these, Tamil Nadu fared better than many other states including Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Gujarat, Assan and even the neighbouring state of Kerala. However, in terms of women’s visibility and participation in the public sphere, the state fared worse than Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Rajasthan.
A glance at the men and women MLAs in the state assemblies: Tamil Nadu, with 5% female representation, fared lower than the national average of 9%. Studies showed that the gap between women’s win rate and men’s win rate in the legislative assembly polls in Tamil Nadu has been reducing over the years. In 2006, the win rate of male candidates was 14% while the same for women candidates was 9%. In the 2011 assembly elections, the win rate of male candidates was 12%, and that of women was 8%. In 2016, both male and female candidates had the same win rate at 6%.
Tara’s analysis also revealed that women’s win rates in elections were higher than men in Tamil Nadu. With respect to election deposit rates, men lost deposits at a much higher rate than women. This indicated that the problem lies not with voters not welcoming women candidates, but with women not getting fielded in adequate numbers in political parties.
Talking about gender and politics, Tara added that “when politics become gender blind, we end up with low female participation. Special efforts are needed to reach out to the marginalized, transgender communities to find equal representation.”
‘Parties should work toward women’s representation’
Carole Spary from the University of Nottingham, who has been working on gender representation in politics in India for the last 16 years, shared insights about the status of women in India and Tamil Nadu politics and the causes of women’s underrepresentation. She said, “It is important for political parties to act as catalysts in improving women’s participation.”
She also observed that fewer women will aspire to the political office if political spaces are projected as a male domain, despite women being able to contest and win elections.
Carole added that political parties also need not wait for the 33% women’s representation bill to be passed before taking action, but can frame policies for addressing women’s underrepresentation. “The solutions to a gender-neutral political space should emerge from the parties themselves, starting from developing a party policy that focuses on gender equality and enforcing it for women to actively take leadership positions within the party and create a gender-neutral organization.”
Stop confining women to ‘women-only’ portfolios
Priyamvadha Vijayakumar, Consultant Editor, India Today said that there is increasing enthusiasm among women towards politics and it is time to tap the energy and bring out their potential as leaders. She said that political parties should move away from confining women leaders to ‘women-only’ portfolios like health and education. Instead, Tamil Nadu’s parties should become trendsetters and not deny women portfolios such as finance, which are perceived to be male oriented, she said.
Sowmya Reddy, General Secretary of the All India Mahila Congress Karnataka, said that women in politics are largely reduced as rubber stamp leaders and said that we are still a long way from realizing gender neutrality.
The MLA of Jayanagar in Bengaluru added that increasing access to education, ensuring jobs and providing healthcare are important for the growth of women. Tara also noted that the government should bring a law on impersonating women as office-bearers to prevent misuse of women’s positions by others.
Source: The News Minute