{"id":14080,"date":"2021-02-24T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-02-24T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/current_affairs\/uncategorized\/24-02-2021\/low-representation-of-women-in-legislatures\/"},"modified":"2021-02-24T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2021-02-24T00:00:00","slug":"low-representation-of-women-in-legislatures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/current-affairs\/24-02-2021\/low-representation-of-women-in-legislatures","title":{"rendered":"Low Representation of Women in Legislatures"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>In News:<\/strong> While releasing a postage stamp on late Smt. Eashwari Bai, Vice President called for consensus over <strong>reservation for women in Parliamentary elections.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Key Highlights of Vice Presidents speech<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Need of reservation for Women:<\/strong> Although the 17th Lok Sabha has the highest number of 78 women members, they account <strong>only for 14% of the total number.<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>Reservations for women in the local bodies have politically empowered lakhs of women in the country.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Way Ahead for Healthy Democracy: <\/strong>Mantra for a <strong>healthy democracy<\/strong> is to <strong>discuss, debate and decide (3Ds) and not disrupt<\/strong>.\n<ul>\n<li>He highlighted need of building consensus on multiple topics like\n<ul>\n<li>Matters of National\u00a0 importance like the country\u2019s security.<\/li>\n<li>Eliminating corruption and ensuring social justice.<\/li>\n<li>Reforms to accelerate development, eliminate delays, diversions and dilutions in delivery of schemes and reaching out benefits to the needy.<\/li>\n<li>Empowering people, promoting transparency and accountability in the system<\/li>\n<li>Mutual respect between Ruling and Opposition Parties.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Code of conduct<\/strong> for Parties and their members, particularly public representatives.\n<ul>\n<li>People should elect their representatives on the basis of 4Cs:\n<ul>\n<li>Character,<\/li>\n<li>Conduct,<\/li>\n<li>Calibre<\/li>\n<li>Capacity,<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Unfortunately, another <strong>set of 4Cs: Cash, Caste, Criminality and Community<\/strong> is trying to hold politics hostage.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Role of Youth:<\/strong> Vice President also appealed to the youth to enter politics with a missionary zeal to serve the needy and poor in the society.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Need\/ Benefits of Reservation for Women<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Constitutional Right to Equality:<\/strong> Socio-Economic Equality can\u2019t be sustainable without Political Equality.\n<ul>\n<li>Further <strong>Article 15 and Article 16 <\/strong>allow Positive Descrimination or Affirmative Action by state.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Redistribution of Resources:<\/strong> Political reservation has increased redistribution of resources in favour of the groups which benefit from reservation.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Experience of Local Bodies:<\/strong> A study about the effect of women reservation in panchayats shows that women elected under the reservation policy invest more in the public goods closely linked to women\u2019s concerns.\n<ul>\n<li>For example, <strong>in Rajasthan and West Bengal<\/strong>, for instance, <strong>increased female political representation in local bodies<\/strong> led to <strong>more investment in drinking water and roads<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Gender equality and sensitivity:<\/strong> A 2008 study, reveals that a sizable proportion of women representatives perceive an enhancement in their self-esteem, confidence and decision-making ability.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Women Reservation Bill:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>1993 &#038; 1994 :<\/strong> The 73rd and the 74th constitutional amendment acts granted women 1\/3 reservation in rural and urban democratic bodies.\n<ul>\n<li>It was the first time the idea for reservation in Parliament gained prominence.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Sept 1996: <\/strong>The Women\u2019s Reservation Bill was initially introduced in the parliament.\n<ul>\n<li>The bill was introduced in <strong>Lok Sabha by the United Front government of HD Deve Gowda<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>The main aim of this bill is to reserve 33 percent seats in Lok Sabha and all state legislative assemblies for women.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Reservation Criteria:<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>As per the bill, the seats will be reserved on a rotational basis.<\/li>\n<li>The seats would be determined by a draw of lots in such a way that a seat would only be reserved once in every three consecutive general elections.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>1998: NDA-I<\/strong> introduced the bill without any success.\n<ul>\n<li>Thereafter, the Bill lapsed and was reintroduced \u2013 in 1999, in 2002 and 2003.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>May 2008: UPA-I government<\/strong>, led by Congress, again introduced the bill to reserve seats for women in Lok Sabha and legislative assemblies in May 2008.<\/li>\n<li><strong>March 2010:<\/strong> After its reintroduction, the bill was passed by Rajya Sabha, but was still left pending in Lok Sabha.\n<ul>\n<li>A few <strong>regional parties like and RJD, Samajwadi Party (SP)<\/strong> has been one of the vocal opponents for the Women\u2019s Reservation Bill.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Concerns Raised Against the Reservation<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Sarpanch Pati: <\/strong>Many Panchayats saw the advent of Sarpanch Pati (Husband of Sarpanch) who were actual power holders instead of females. Thus, there was no major Socio-Political change.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Mandatory reservations will not address deeper imbalances of power:<\/strong> Inexperienced candidates will struggle to raise funds for their campaigns, defend the interest of their constituencies, and ultimately stand little chance of being re-elected.<\/li>\n<li><strong>General quota would favour upper caste and class women:<\/strong> It would compete with claims of other minority groups and infringe on existing quotas for Other Backward Classes, Scheduled Castes and Tribes.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Lack of education and leadership training:<\/strong> A survey found that female panchayat heads to be less acquainted with the functioning of the Panchayati system than their male counterparts.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Lacks social capital:<\/strong> Since women are not integrated in any local political process initially, and, unlike men, are not part of the relevant social and power networks, women leaders are prone to inefficiencies.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Although from criticism it may seem that reservation didn\u2019t yield expected results but in many cases women Sarpanchs started asserting themselves.<\/li>\n<li>Further a new breed of young enthusiastic women emerged who became pall bearers of change. Thus reservation for women in legislature can be a good proposition.<\/li>\n<li>The reservation may be first provided for State legislative assembly elections and later extended to Parliament.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<table border=\"1\" cellspacing=\"0\" style=\"width:735px\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"vertical-align:top; width:468.0pt\">\n<p><strong>About late Smt. Eashwari Bai (<\/strong>1918 &#8211; 1991<strong>)<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>She was an educationist, social reformer and a former MLA and president of the Republican Party of India.<\/li>\n<li>Inspired by B. R. Ambedkar joined the Scheduled Castes Federation (SCF) in 1958. Later, SCF was renamed as the Republican Party of India (RPI)<\/li>\n<li>She founded the Civic Rights Committee (CRC) in the 1960s.<\/li>\n<li>As a chairperson of the Women and Child Welfare, Bai was instrumental in bringing legislation for free education of girl students up to higher education.<\/li>\n<li>She was also supporter of separate Telangana State.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/pib.gov.in\/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1700262#:~:text=The%20Vice%20President%2C%20Shri%20M,on%20providing%20reservation%20to%20them.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">PIB<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In News: While releasing a postage stamp on late Smt. Eashwari Bai, Vice President called for consensus over reservation for women in Parliamentary elections. Key Highlights of Vice Presidents speech Need of reservation for Women: Although the 17th Lok Sabha has the highest number of 78 women members, they account only for 14% of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14081,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-14080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-current-affairs","tag-gs1"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/wp-images.nextias.com\/cdn-cgi\/image\/format=auto\/ca\/uploads\/2023\/07\/6201604current-affairs (1).jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}