WOMEN RESERVATION IN POLITICS

WOMEN RESERVATION IN POLITICS

WHY IN NEWS?

• Recently, Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) leader K. Kavitha launched a six-hour hunger strike on March 10 seeking early passage of the long-pending Women’s Reservation Bill.

HISTORY OF WOMEN RESERVATION IN POLITICS

• The issue of reservation for women in politics can be traced back to the Indian national movement.
• The issue of women’s reservation came up in Constituent Assembly debates as well, but it was rejected as being unnecessary.
• It was assumed that a democracy would accord representation to all groups.
• For instance, in 1947, noted freedom fighter Renuka Ray said, “We always held that when the men who have fought and struggled for their country’s freedom came to power, the rights and liberties of women too would be guaranteed…”.
• As a consequence, women’s reservation became recurrent theme in policy debates.

MORE ABOUT THE PAST DEVELOPMENTS

• The National Perspective Plan for Women recommended in 1988 that reservation be provided to women right from the level of the panchayat to that of Parliament.
• These recommendations paved the way for the historic enactment of the 73rd and 74th amendments to the Constitution which mandate all State governments to reserve one-third of the seats for women in Panchayati Ra Institutions and one-third of the offices of the chairperson at all levels of the Panchayati Raj Institutions, and in urban local bodies, respectively.
• Within these seats, one-third are reserved for Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe women.
• Many States such as Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Kerala have made legal provisions to ensure 50% reservation for women in local bodies.

CURRENT STATUS OF THE WOMENS IN THE PARLIAMENT

• Only about 14% of the members in Indian Parliament are women, the highest so far.
• According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, India has a fewer percentage of women in the lower House than its neighbours such as Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

JOURNEY OF WOMEN’S RESERVATION BILL

• The Women’s Reservation Bill proposes to reserve 33% of seats in the Lok Sabha and State Legislative Assemblies for women.
• The Constitution (108^th Amendment) Bill, 2008 aims to reserve one-third of all seats for women in Lok Sabha and the State Legislative Assemblies.
• It was first introduced in the Lok Sabha as the 81st Amendment Bill in September 1996 by the Deve Gowda led United Front government.
• The Bill failed to get the approval of the House and was referred to a joint parliamentary committee which submitted its report to the Lok Sabha in December 1996.
• But the Bill lapsed with the dissolution of the Lok Sabha.
• In 1998, the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government reintroduced the Bill in the 12th Lok Sabha. The Bill failed to get support and lapsed again.
• In 2008, the Manmohan Singh-led United Progressive Alliance government tabled the Bill in the Rajya Sabha and it was passed with 186-1 votes on March 9, 2010.
• However, the Bill was never taken up of consideration in the Lok Sabha and lapsed with the dissolution of the 15th Lok Sabha.

BENEFITS OF THE WOMENS RESERVATION IN POLITICS

• Proponents of the Bill argue that affirmative action is imperative to better the condition of women since political parties are inherently patriarchal.
• Despite the hopes of the leaders of the national movement, women are still under-represented in Parliament.
• Reservations, proponents believe, will ensure that women form a strong lobby in Parliament to fight for issues that are often ignored.
• There is now evidence that women as panchayat leaders have shattered social myths, been more accessible than men, controlled the stranglehold of liquor, invested substantially in public goods such as drinking water, helped other women express themselves better, reduced corruption, prioritised nutrition outcomes, and changed the development agenda at the grassroots level.
• India has a high percentage of crimes against women, low participation of women in the workforce, low nutrition levels and a skewed sex ratio.
• To address all these challenges, it is argued, we need more women in decision ­making.

CRITICISM AGAINST THE BILL

• The opponents of reservation for women argue that the idea runs counter to the principle of equality enshrined in the Constitution.
• Opponents argue that it would perpetuate the unequal status of women since they would not be perceived to be competing on merit. They also contend that this policy diverts attention from the larger issues of electoral reform such as criminalisation of politics and inner party democracy.
• They say that women will not be competing on merit if there is reservation, which could lower their status in society.
• Women are unlike, say, a caste group, which means that they are not a homogenous community. Therefore, the same arguments made for caste-based reservation cannot be made for women.
• Women’s interests cannot be isolated from other social, economic and political strata.
• Some opponents argue that reservation of seats in Parliament would restrict the choice of voters to women candidates.
• As men hold primary power as well as key positions in politics, some have even argued that bringing women into politics could destroy the “ideal family”.

WAY FORWARD

• Opponents of this Bill argue that instead of endorsing reservation, the political parties must incorporate a bottom-up approach of inducting more women in their parties to increase their representation in the parliament.
• The success stories of women politicians must be aware of, to the younger generations to remove the existing idea of the patriarchal dominance within the society.
• Women’s Reservation Bill is a mandatory solution that needs to be implemented in India, as the Indian economy and society are currently under the influence of male chauvinism.

SOURCE : THE HINDU

SYLLABUS : MAINS, GS-2 INDIAN POLITY