India’s women are showing up at the ballot box.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The bigger question is: Are political parties showing up for them when it is time to give tickets?<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n Look at the numbers from the 2024 Lok Sabha election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Women made up 48.62% of India’s registered electors<\/strong>. That means almost half of the country’s voters were women. And they did not stay home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In fact, 65.78% of female electors voted<\/strong>, compared with 65.55% of male electors. For only the second time in the history of Lok Sabha elections, women actually turned out to vote at a higher rate than men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That is a remarkable change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But then comes the uncomfortable part.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Out of 8,360 candidates<\/strong> who contested the 2024 Lok Sabha election, only 800 were women<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That is just 9.6%<\/strong> of all candidates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And when the results came in, only 74 women were elected<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Out of 543 seats, that is just 13.6%<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So here is the strange picture Indian democracy presents today:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Women are almost half the voters. Why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n That is the question worth asking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For a long time, Indian politics was built around the assumption that the male voter was the primary political actor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That assumption is becoming harder to defend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2024, India had around 47.63 crore registered female electors<\/strong>. The number of female electors per 1,000 male electors also reached a new high of 946<\/strong>, compared with 926 in 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And women are not simply registering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They are voting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In several states, the difference is particularly striking. Bihar, for example, recorded female voter turnout of 59.45%, compared with 53% for men. In Jharkhand, it was 68.66% for women compared with 63.58% for men. In Kerala, female turnout was 71.86%, compared with 70.34% for men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This tells us something important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Women are not politically passive.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n They are making choices. They are participating. They are influencing elections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So perhaps the problem is not whether women are interested in politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps the problem is whether the political system is giving them enough opportunities to participate as leaders<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is a huge difference between asking a woman to vote for a party and asking a woman to represent that party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first requires a vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The second requires a ticket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And this is where the numbers become interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2024, there were 800 female candidates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That was an improvement from 726 in 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But look at the longer picture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2009, women made up only 6.9% of Lok Sabha candidates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2014, the number rose to 8.1%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2019, it reached 9%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And in 2024, it reached 9.6%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But it is slow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Very slow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We have spent years talking about women’s political participation, yet women still made up less than one in ten Lok Sabha candidates in the 2024 election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And representation after the election was only 13.6%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The gap between participation and power is difficult to ignore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It would be easy to say, “But elections are competitive. If women are capable candidates, they should win.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n That argument misses something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before a candidate can win an election, someone has to decide that candidate deserves the opportunity to contest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Political parties decide who gets tickets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Parties decide which constituencies a candidate is given.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Parties decide how much organisational support that candidate receives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Parties decide who gets access to senior leaders, campaign machinery and resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So the conversation cannot stop at:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Why aren’t more women winning?”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n We also need to ask:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Why aren’t more women being given serious opportunities to contest?”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Election Commission’s data shows that there were 152 Lok Sabha constituencies with no female candidate at all<\/strong> in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That is not a small number.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It means there were constituencies where voters did not even have a woman among the candidates to choose from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And that brings us to an uncomfortable question for political parties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If women are almost half of the electorate, why are they still such a small part of the candidate pool?<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is not about putting more women in Parliament simply because it looks good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Representation matters because political priorities are shaped by who gets to sit at the table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Women experience public policy differently in many areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Safety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Public transport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Healthcare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Employment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Childcare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Property rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Digital harassment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Local infrastructure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These are not “women’s issues” in some narrow sense. They are national issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But people who have lived different experiences can bring different questions into political decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That is the value of representation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And there is another point that is often missed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Women do not need to enter politics only to speak about women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A woman politician can be an expert on agriculture, defence, finance, urban development, foreign policy, technology or anything else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The goal should not be to put women into a political box.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The goal should be to make the political space large enough for them to compete across every issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is an important development that cannot be ignored.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2023, Parliament passed the Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-Eighth Amendment) Bill, commonly known as the Women’s Reservation Bill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The law provides for reserving one-third of seats in the Lok Sabha and state legislative assemblies for women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But there is an important catch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The reservation is linked to a future delimitation exercise following the relevant census, meaning it was not in effect for the 2024 Lok Sabha election<\/strong>. (Parline<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n So the 2024 election gives us an interesting baseline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before the new reservation system takes effect, women won 74 seats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That is actually lower than the 78 women elected in 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words, progress is not always a straight line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sometimes the numbers move forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sometimes they move backwards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That is exactly why political participation needs more than good intentions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The easiest response would be to say, “Give women more tickets.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But that is only the beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Political parties also need to build a pipeline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A woman should not first hear from a political party when an election is six months away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If parties want serious female leaders, they need to identify and develop them years before an election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That means local leadership programmes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mentorship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Political communication training.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Constituency work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Public speaking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Policy understanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Campaign management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Digital communication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fundraising.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Organisation building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And most importantly, actual responsibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Give young women the chance to run local campaigns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let them work on constituency issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let them sit in political meetings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let them speak to voters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let them make mistakes and learn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You cannot create an experienced political leader overnight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Political parties respond to incentives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If voters reward competent women candidates, parties notice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If voters reject them simply because they are women, parties notice that too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So the conversation cannot only be about parties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It has to include society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Would we judge a woman candidate by the same standards as a male candidate?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Would we question her ambition differently?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Would we call a confident male politician “strong” but describe a confident woman as “aggressive”?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Would we ask a male candidate about his family responsibilities in the same way?<\/p>\n\n\n\n These biases may not appear in election statistics, but they can influence who enters politics, who survives in politics and who eventually gets a ticket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n India does not have a participation problem when it comes to women voters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The numbers make that increasingly clear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2024, women were 48.62% of registered electors<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They turned out to vote at 65.78%<\/strong>, slightly higher than men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet only 800 of 8,360 Lok Sabha candidates were women<\/strong>, and only 74 women were elected<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That is the gap we need to discuss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because democracy is not only about who votes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is also about who gets the opportunity to stand for election, who gets heard, who gets trusted with responsibility and who gets to make decisions.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Women have already demonstrated that they are willing to participate in India’s democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now political institutions need to answer a harder question:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Are we willing to give them an equal chance to lead it?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The next chapter of Indian politics should not be about convincing women to enter politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They are already there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The challenge is to make sure that when they arrive at the door, the door actually opens.<\/strong> \ud83c\uddee\ud83c\uddf3<\/p>\n\n\n\n Election Commission of India: 2024 Lok Sabha Statistical Reports<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Women vote in numbers comparable to, and sometimes higher than, men.
But women are still a small minority among the people making the laws.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe voter has changed. Has politics changed with her?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
From voter to candidate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The problem is not simply winning elections<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Representation matters, but not just for symbolism<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
India has already taken a major step<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What should political parties do?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
And voters have a role too<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The real question<\/h2>\n\n\n\n