Women break quota barrier in local bodies

By C. Gouridasan Nair

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, JAN. 26. Even as Parliament gropes in the dark to find the exact level at which women's reservation should be pegged, the local bodies in Kerala have shown that the sky will not fall off if women are given more than the mandatory 33.3 per cent seats.

The three-tier local bodies in Kerala, to which elections were held in September, 2000, have a fair sprinkling of women councillors going by figures available with the People's Plan Campaign Cell of the State Planning Board. Of all the elected people's representatives in the local bodies, 38 per cent are women, up from 35.8 per cent in the councils that demitted office. Elections to a few hundred seats are yet to be conducted and when these are over, the total number of women representatives might well go up from the present 5,000-odd to 6,500 out of the 17,074 councillors at all the three levels.

But there seems to be a catch here. As of now, presence of women as a percentage of the total number of elected representatives is the highest in Block Panchayats, their strength being 40.79 per cent. Politically, the Block Panchayats are the weakest link in the three-tier panchayat raj system and the higher representation for women at this level could be a suggestive of the political parties' readiness to field more women in a tier which does not matter too much, either politically or administratively.

The presence of women is the most insignificant in Municipal Corporations (35.07 per cent). At the level of the Grama Panchayats, they number close to 5,000 (approx. 36 per cent) and at the level of the District Panchayats, their strength is only 34.7 per cent. Of the total number of elected women representatives, 78 per cent are members of Grama Panchayats. Of the remaining women representatives, 9.6 per cent are in Block Panchayats, 11.06 per cent in Municipal Corporations and 1.25 per cent in District Panchayats.

The rise in the number of elected women representatives is attributed to the increase in the total number of wards from 14,173 to 17,074 and the higher number of who entered the fray in the September elections. Since the seats reserved for women come to only 33.3 per cent, their actual strength in the local bodies suggest that roughly 700 women had got elected to their respective local bodies from general seats. It is also estimated that 70 per cent of the women who were members of the outgoing local body council have got reelected.

Statistics also show that almost 70 per cent of the women elected representatives are less than 40 years old and roughly 25 per cent are below 30 years of age. Interestingly, in the case of men, only 48 per cent are aged below 40 years and men aged below 30 years is a meagre 13 per cent. However, overall, there has been an improvement in the presence of youth in the local bodies as compared to the councils that went out of office.

In respect of educational attainments too women are ahead of men. Roughly 22 per cent of the women elected representatives are graduates or post-graduates as compared to their 20 per cent male counterparts. If those who have undergone pre-degree courses too are taken into account, the total number of women representatives who have had college education would stand at 44.5 per cent. Among the women, 47.58 per cent have had high school education, probably a sign of the equal opportunities available to women in the State. In the case of men, the relevant figure is a shade lower, 46.95 per cent. The same goes for post-graduates, the figures being 4.16 per cent in the case of women and 4.04 in the case of men.

But figures relating to work participation rates of men and women show that the latter is at a disadvantage. Of the women representatives, 38.05 per cent are jobless as compared to 6.91 per cent men. Among the women representatives, only 8.84 per cent are full-time political activists. In the case of men, 21.88 per cent are full-timers in politics. Women score over men only in terms of the number of teachers who have opted to contest the local body elections. Among the women representatives, 5.92 per cent are school teachers and another 34.35 per cent anganavadi teachers. In comparison, only 4.94 per cent of the men who have got elected to the local bodies are teachers.

Although surveys conducted by different agencies have come up with divergent figures, the general trend appears to be one of working women preferring to stay clear of politics at the local level. According to the State Planning Board, working women constituted 48.2 per cent of the women representatives in the last local body councils. However, the Kerala Sastra Sahithya Parishad (KSSP) had put the figure at 44.13 per cent and the State Election Commission at 34.28 per cent. The latest survey conducted by the Planning Board shows that working women as a percentage of the total number of women elected representatives came to only 32.57 per cent.

Among the women representatives, 68.4 per cent have got elected to the local bodies for the first time. Thirty five per cent of the women have entered the local bodies because of their family background. Another 25 per cent stumbled into it. Only 19 per cent have entered the scene on account of their commitment to political ideologies or participation in struggles.

The caste-wise representation of women in the local bodies also appear to augur well for the future. For example, the number of women among representatives belonging to the Muslim community has gone up from 26.6 in the last local bodies to 38 per cent in the reconstituted ones. A similar trend, the Planning Board survey says, is also noticeable in the case of forward communities.

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Section  : Southern States
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