This Quote Means: ‘Greater political power alone will not improve women’s plight’

Amid the special session of Parliament, which will go on for five days beginning today (September 18), it is being speculated that a Bill on women’s reservation in Parliament could be introduced.

The possibility has evoked interest in previous attempts to pass such Bills, the history of women’s reservation in legislative bodies, and just why the idea is supported or opposed. In this context, we take a brief look at the statement “Greater political power alone will not improve women’s plight”. It has been a commonly used line of argument against such measures and has also been asked as an examination question for the essay paper of the UPSC CSE in the past.

What does the quote mean?

The quote talks about a criticism that many have raised on the question of political reservations – that by itself, it is not going to bridge the gap that exists between men and women in society. But why is political representation seen as a possible solution to this complex issue in the first place?

Inequality can be measured in multiple ways. The World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Index, for instance, has four dimensions – Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival and Political Empowerment. The first three are self-explanatory as indicators of progress, relating to the ability to earn, be well-informed and healthy.

So why should political participation be included? It shows the proportion of women who are involved directly in the legislative and decision-making processes in a country. Simply, it indicates their presence in a crucial field that has been male-dominated for centuries. Political participation also matters because it influences the lives of millions of people directly and promises significant power to those who succeed in garnering popular support.

In India, the first Lok Sabha of 1952 had 5 per cent of its Members of Parliament and so, 24 women were elected out of 489 parliamentary seats. The current Lok Sabha has the highest-ever percentage of women MPs, at 14 per cent, which is lower than the global average of 24 per cent.

There is also an argument that having a diverse group of people in powerful positions helps institutions view things from a variety of perspectives. This can help make sure marginalised groups don’t get left behind even as others progress. For women in particular, several studies have claimed that women political leaders in India have made greater investments in areas important to them: availability of drinking water, girls’ education, etc.

What, then, are the criticisms against equating political power with progress?

Despite the fact that one-third of seats are to be reserved for women under the 73rd and 74th Amendments to the Constitution in local governing bodies since the early 1990s, there are serious drawbacks nevertheless. These exist even after many states, later on, went on to introduce 50% reservation for women.

The Oxford Companion to Politics in India, in a chapter on Local Governance, cites a study (Stephen and Sekaran 2001) on this. Conducted in Karnataka, it states women in panchayat faced “more stumbling blocks than building blocks”. Half the women councillors contested elections upon the insistence of male relatives who sought indirect control of political power through them.

Even when they attempted to exercise their powers by themselves, other villagers refused cooperation, lower-level government officials withheld information from them and they became the subjects of prejudice and gossip.

Another paper (‘Tokenism or Agency? The Impact of Women’s Reservations on Panchayats in South India’) said of its findings in 2004, “Women in reserved GPs (gram panchayats) perform worse when most of the land in the village is owned by upper castes. This suggests that caste structures may be correlated with structures of patriarchy making the job of women particularly difficult when they are confronted with entrenched hierarchies.”

A related demand to recognise caste within women’s reservations has been made by several political parties as well and has been a source of deep contention in the passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill in Parliament.

But this may not necessarily mean that all news on the front indicates mere tokenism. “We also see that women pradhans in reserved GPs in Andhra Pradesh perform the worst, while those in Kerala and Karnataka tend to perform better. This again indicates the salience of the maturity of the reservations system since it has been in place much longer in Kerala and Karnataka than in AP,” the paper noted.

Therefore, the keyword in the quote we began with, is ‘alone’. Women’s reservation has its flaws and benefits, but even if it were to work as it is intended, it is only one dimension of measuring progress. Political, social and economic progress are all interlinked and simply achieving one of them will result in a superficial idea of progress for any section of society.

For women to achieve progress as a whole, the most marginalised among them will have to be focused on and given basic opportunities to lead a good life. Whether reservation in Parliament becomes a reality remains to be seen, but in discussions and debates on it, the need for simultaneous progress on other indicators must also be pointed out.