Where Are the Women in India’s General Elections?

As in previous elections to state assemblies and the national parliament, in the just-concluded 18th general elections too, India’s political parties remained reluctant to field many women candidates. 

Women comprised just a small fraction of the candidates in the fray in all phases of the elections to the Lok Sabha, India’s lower house.

The percentage of women candidates was 8 percent in the first and second phases, 9 percent in the third phase, 10 percent in the fourth phase, and 11.8 percent in the fifth phase, according to the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), a non-profit organization working for fair and transparent elections. 

While the percentage of women candidates has always been low and has never entered the double-digits, it is rising – albeit incrementally. Women comprised 6.1 percent of all candidates in the 2004 general election, 6.9 percent in 2009, 8 percent in 2014, and 9 percent in 2019.

A strategist in a political consultancy based in New Delhi told The Diplomat that “winnability” determines the choice of candidates and “winnability of women is seen to be low.” Many women who are fielded as candidates are film actors or belong to royal or political families, he pointed out.

While it is widely believed that women score low in terms of winnability, data points to a different reality. 

According to PRS Legislative Research, an independent research institute that works to make the Indian legislative process better informed, “Across parties with 10 or more MPs, women were as likely to win as men.”

Indeed, results in recent general elections show that women candidates have a higher success rate. In the 2019 general election, 78 women were elected out of the 716 women who contested – a success rate of 10.89 percent. The success rate for men in the same elections was just 6.41 percent. While far more male candidates appear on ballots, when women do run for office they are statistically more successful.

It is patriarchal attitudes, stereotyping, and plain misogyny, then, that explain the reluctance of India’s political parties to field women candidates.

In their speeches, leaders of most parties wax eloquent on empowering women politically and economically. But rarely have they walked the talk. India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Indian National Congress, the main opposition party, are most guilty in this regard. Regional parties, like the Biju Janata Dal and the Trinamool Congress (TMC), have shown greater willingness to field women. 

A law providing for quotas for women was seen as the way to improve their representation in legislatures. However, the bill faced strong resistance for decades. 

It was only in September last year that India’s Parliament finally enacted the Women’s Reservation Bill, which provides for the reservation of 33 percent of seats in legislatures for women. While the law has not come into effect yet – that is expected to happen only after the census and a fresh delimitation of electoral boundaries is carried out – there was nothing stopping parties from fielding more women in the 2024 general election had they wanted to.

That Indian parties nominated just a handful of women underscores their flimsy commitment to gender equity in political representation. Of the few women contesting the most recent election, many are from highly privileged backgrounds and, as noted above, are either film actors or belong to royal or political families.

The number of women voters is growing in India, as is the percentage of women voters. Parties have therefore been outdoing each other in wooing women for votes with promises of freebies and welfare schemes. The Congress, for example, has pledged to set aside 50 percent of all new recruitments in central government jobs for women, and to make direct cash transfers of 100,000 Indian rupees (approximately $1,200) to one woman from each of the country’s poorest families. 

In West Bengal state, the ruling TMC has been providing a monthly allowance to women under the Lakshmir Bhandar Scheme. Recognizing its widespread impact – it covers around 20 million economically weaker women out of the roughly 37 million women voters in the state – the TMC raised the allowance per woman in the run-up to elections. 

Although parties and politicians have acted with alacrity to woo women’s votes, they have been brazen in fielding and endorsing male candidates facing charges for serious crimes against women, including rape. 

Prajwal Revanna, a sitting MP of the Janata Dal-Secular, which is an ally of the BJP, was a joint candidate of the two parties from Hassan in Karnataka. Although Prajwal and his father, H. D. Revanna, himself a member of the Karnataka state assembly, face charges of sexually assaulting and blackmailing thousands of women, BJP leaders neither condemned their conduct nor distanced themselves from the JDS. 

Another serial sexual offender is Brij Bhushan Singh, the BJP’s sitting MP from Kaiserganj and the former chief of the Wrestling Federation of India. Given Singh’s enormous clout in multiple constituencies, the BJP was loathe to act against him and would have endorsed his candidacy again had it not been for public pressure. But by fielding Singh’s son from the Kaiserganj constituency, the BJP has ensured that an alleged sexual predator continues to wield power through his family ties. 

How many of the handful of women candidates contesting the 18th general elections will enter India’s Parliament will be known on June 4, when votes are counted. Will the elected women raise their voices in parliament on issues of gender and social justice? 

In the outgoing Parliament, there were women MPs like Supriya Sule and Mohua Moitra who were articulate and raised issues related to development, gender equity, and corruption diligently and eloquently. But there were also women MPs like Minister for Women and Child Development Smriti Irani, who was silent on rape and gang rape in the country, and actor Hema Malini, who showed little understanding of political, social, and economic problems.

Whether the new MPs, women and men alike, will address or – at a minimum – raise issues related to India’s multiple social problems remains to be seen.