By Dr. Jean D’Cunha
Men outnumbering women has been the typical polling landscape in India, one that broke in the 2019 Lok Sabha (lower house of parliament) poll after 70 years and 17 general elections since independence. Women’s voter turnout finally trumped male turnout.
In 2024, from an all-India voter turnout of 642 million (65.79 percent) at the Lok Sabha polls, women voters numbered 321 million (65.78 percent), marginally lower than the male turnout at 65.80 percent and lower than women’s 67.18 percent in 2019.
Nineteen of India’s 31 states and union territories had a higher proportion of women voters than men, and in 18, the proportion of women voters was higher than the state average voter turnout.
Interacting factors have driven a decade of increased women’s voter registration and turnout. Increasing female literacy, independence and exposure to an exponentially proliferating electronic media have raised women’s political awareness.
Political parties are increasingly mobilizing women and engaging them in campaign activities despite shying off from fielding them equally with men as candidates.
The Election Commission’s programmatic focus on free and fair elections includes women-targeted voter education and measures to enhance women’s safety, security and freedom from violence at the polls.
Grassroots awareness-raising and women’s mobilization by women’s organizations have enhanced women’s consciousness of their political and electoral rights.
Dr Vibhuti Patel, a former professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and Shreemati Nathibai Damodar Thackersey Women’s University, Mumbai (formerly Bombay), says that “women’s groups across India have long been mobilizing women around their economic rights, civil and political rights, and on justice for violence against them.
Women of varied profiles are also part of larger movements for statehood, or against poor investment in state development or discrimination and violence by dominant tribes against the weaker, contributing to women’s large voter turnout.”
Sandhya Gokhale, a women’s rights activist, says that “in these elections, women’s groups have been invited by minority communities to speak with and raise the consciousness of women voters. This helped increase women’s participation in the electoral process.”
Reservation of seats for women in the local panchayats (councils), even if not perfect in practice, has enhanced women’s formal political leadership, improved community perceptions about women in politics and has contributed to female voter turnout in these polls.
“Women’s increased voter turnout is also related to female-household-headship mediated by male out-migration and inability to vote in migrant host sites,” says Patel.
Women’s voting patterns were mixed, reflecting state concerns, local dynamics and coalition politics that stamped the recent elections. Patterns varied across states, women’s socio-economic locations and identities, candidates, parties, and issues that affected women’s states, communities and interests.
Gokhale and Patel observe that “rural and poor women, women from marginalized castes and tribes, minority religious communities, and young women voted en masse.”
A Center for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS)-Lokniti post-poll survey shows that economic issues—inflation, unemployment, and household economic status—underpinned voting choices, especially among women.
Patel says that “often coupled with other issues, welfare schemes for women that most parties have introduced played an important role in garnering women’s votes.”
This aligns with the CSDS-Lokniti survey findings that in West Bengal, for example, where women’s voter turnout was 80.18 percent, the incumbent state government obtained a 10.6 percent increase in women’s vote share, primarily due to its women-centric schemes.
The Lakshmi Bhandar scheme increased ongoing cash transfers to women, especially those aged 25-60 years from the historically disadvantaged or marginalized groups designated as Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe, before the polls, with positive impacts.
Safeguarding the Bengali identity and potential loss of protections under the Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 also shaped voting choices. Gokhale says that “for women from more politically aware marginalized castes and minority religious communities in Maharashtra, safeguarding India’s Constitution, and the threatened loss of rights under the Citizenship Amendment Act 2019, contributed to a shift in choice towards the Opposition Alliance.”
Patel says that “women [and men] farmers from the state’s sugar belt, bereft of minimum support prices, made similar calls. In parts of Karnataka, women campaigned actively against candidates with poor records on women’s rights. Voters in many sites were unimpressed by personal attacks on competing candidates and divisive politics to garner votes.”
“Women’s electoral choices were often aligned with their communities rather than independent, given limits on women’s participation in public, political spaces, the daily burden they bear for survival and community imperatives to defend their safety and well-being in the face of majoritarian politics,” Gokhale added.
“But younger, educated, more politically active women,” said Patel, “are increasingly voting independently in favor of checks and balances in the democratic process.”
These election outcomes are promising for women’s enhanced empowerment as two key trends converge. The political system understands the strength of the female electorate. And women’s growing political engagement is manifest in their exercise of voice and choice.
Leveraging this, policies and programs must transcend targeting women’s immediate needs to addressing their strategic interests and rights and transforming male-centric gender-based power relations with a committed focus on marginalized women.
Promising examples include the law reserving 33 percent of seats for women in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies and the five Mahila Nyay guarantees, which include financial aid, job reservations, and higher wages for women.
The former is a crucial enabler of women’s political empowerment. Reservations can fast-track and catapult a critical mass of women into national and state leadership beyond the current proportions and enhance women’s economic and social rights.
Patel says that “over the last 30 years, we now have 46 percent of women panchayati raj leaders taking independent decisions compared to 54 percent who are still controlled by men. Investments in issues key to women—health, education, clean drinking water and energy, and small irrigation systems—have positively impacted the lives of women and children.
This has generated positive women role models for younger women in communities. It has inspired many women panchayati raj leaders to aspire to leadership at higher levels of government.”
Mahila Nyay strengthens women’s economic rights and security by transferring large cash sums (about $1,200) directly to women’s bank accounts, potentially enabling independent control (significant, given women’s unpaid work, including unpaid care work); increasing government jobs for women; increasing poor community-based women social workers’ wages from central government budgets — an essential indicator of state accountability to women; and strengthening women’s access to justice.
Women from different socio-economic locations must be central to the design, implementation, monitoring, evaluation and revision of these initiatives via sustained consultations between representatives and women’s constituencies. This enables alignment with the strategic interests of different categories of women.
These programs must have gender-responsive targets, indicators, and budgets that demonstrate accountability to women. “With the inclusion of gender and economic experts in pre-budget discussions and with 18 states and union territories and 17 sub-national governments implementing gender-responsive budgets at sectoral level, our accountability to women can reach new heights,” says Patel.
source ucanews