Opinion - Editorials

The elusive quota for women

The unending saga of the Women's Reservation Bill can be viewed in two ways. If nine years and countless unparliamentary fisticuffs later, the Bill can do no better than wait for the `next session,' the prognosis cannot be bright. On the other hand, why not see hope in the fact that these nine years have helped cool tempers around the Bill? Nobody will claim that Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh and Railways Minister Lalu Prasad are the picture of cooperation. Indeed, thanks to their seeming intransigence, several oddball ideas have gained currency, including a ludicrous proposal to increase the strength of the Lok Sabha to 900. Yet the debates are no longer rancorous and there is talk of movement towards a negotiated consensus. Progressive legislation is tough to pass for a complexity of reasons. Women round the world have fought protracted battles to win their rights. In the United States, the 19th Amendment granting them voting rights was the result of a 72-year struggle that began in 1848. In Britain, they won the right to vote in 1918, half a century after John Stuart Mill called for women's suffrage. Switzerland caved in as late as 1971.

The republican Constitution, adopted in 1950, enfranchised Indian women at one stroke. Over the years, Parliament has passed a remarkable range of pro-women legislation — most of it unopposed. However, entrenched patriarchy is not easily challenged. It can hardly be to the satisfaction of the Lok Sabha that with respect to women's representation in the lower House, India ranks a miserable 134 out of 186 countries surveyed by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (World Map of Women in Politics, 2005, published by the IPU and the United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women). Pakistan, by contrast, ranks 40, its women having 21.3 per cent representation compared with Indian women's 8.3 per cent. The surprise in the pack is Rwanda; it has edged past the Nordic countries to bag the top position with 48.8 per cent representation for its women. Sweden follows with 45.3 per cent. These achievements are, in large part, an outcome of special enabling measures. The Nordic countries mandate affirmative action such as quotas and targets, while Belgium provides for a statutory quota of 33.3 per cent for women. The Indian case is ironic, considering the higher overall winning ratio for women candidates. Forty-five of 355 women contestants (12.6 per cent) won in the 14th General Election compared with 498 of 5,050 men contestants (9.8 per cent). The strike rate in the preceding general election was 17.2 per cent for women and 11.3 per cent for men. Male candidates have an edge in the national parties but barely so. Of the 30 women fielded by the Bharatiya Janata Party in the May 2004 contest, 10 (33.3 per cent) won. The female success ratio was 62.5 per cent for the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and 26.6 per cent for the Congress. Need we say more?

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