Scripting our own change

What a difference 13 years can make. Back in 2010, when the women’s reservation bill made it through the Rajya Sabha, a picture that you could never have imagined was splashed on the front pages. The late Sushma Swaraj and Brinda Karat in a euphoric embrace, Right and Left, sisterhood 101. It remains a moment of pure, unscripted joy.

Back then, it was also quite all right to put your misogyny on display. The late Sharad Yadav swore he’d kill himself before allowing the bill to be passed for the benefit of parkati mahilayen (short-haired women) without a separate quota for OBC women. The other Yadav, Mulayam Singh, warned that if passed, the bill would lead to “men whistling in Parliament.”

For two days there was utter chaos; the marshalls had to be called in and the then-speaker Meira Kumar prudently ordered paperweights and other likely projectiles to be removed from the House.

When the allies threatened to withdraw support to the Congress, the bill flopped.

A measure of how far nari shakti has progressed in just over a decade can be seen in the eagerness of all political parties to claim credit for the finally passed bill. Just two voted against it in the Lok Sabha, not one against it in the Upper House. To be sure it won’t come into effect until a Census count and delimitation exercise increases the number of overall Lok Sabha seats at some unspecified point in the future. In other words, a time when there are more seats for all and the blow will be softened since women won’t be taking away “men’s” seats.

Seventy-six years after our founding mothers insisted that women didn’t need ‘preferential’ treatment via quotas, women continue to be edged out of not just Parliament (barely 15% in the Lok Sabha and 9% average in state legislatures) but from public space in general.

In the high courts, we languish at 13.57%. Barely one in five women are in paid work. And for the first time only this year, we breached the 33% mark in the civil services examination.

Women’s share in Parliament remains a sticky problem. In percentage terms, it has indeed trebled from 4.5% in 1952 to 15.2% now. But, if we’re not there yet, it’s because political parties remain obdurate about fielding women on the assumption that women can’t win. In fact, women are as likely to win as men, finds PRS Legislative Research. All they need is the ticket.

We are seeing India’s most aspirational generation of women, breaking barriers on the sports field, marching in the armed forces and demanding legislative change. And, yes, exercising their ballot at election time. In the 2019 election, women had a slight edge over male voters, 67.18% to their 67.01%.

In this simple fact lies the growing deference of parties to the women’s vote. Nitish Kumar’s thank you to the powerful women’s self-help groups that voted him to office in Bihar was to bring in prohibition, a long-standing demand. From Karnataka to Madhya Pradesh, parties that remain stingy about getting women to contest are delivering on free bus fares, subsidized gas cylinders and monthly cash payouts.

Only two parties implemented voluntary quotas for women in the 2019 election. Forty-two percent of Naveen Patnaik’s BJD and 41% of the TMC’s MPs are women.

In Mexico, where gender parity for all candidates for elected office sailed to victory in May 2019, voters next year will choose from two leading candidates, both women, to elect their country’s first woman head of state. In a Congress made up of 50% women, there are now more childcare options for employed women, a robust policy to get more girls to study STEM (science, technology and medicine) and, in contrast to its northern neighbour, legal abortion in every province.

It’s the quotas that made the difference, as it will in India. Our time will come and we will wait for it.

Namita Bhandare writes on gender. The views expressed are personal