The Hindu Business Line : Getting women into Parliament

THE Women's Reservation Bill has been put on the backburner once again with the BJP coming out with the improbable suggestion that one-third of the Lok Sabha constituencies should have two MPs — one male and one female! Extrapolating that logic, each State Assembly should have dual representation. As though the colossal cost of maintaining one MP or MLA per constituency is not enough of a burden for the country!

But while India is still dilly-dallying on the issue of women's quota in its legislature, the picture is not so bleak in the rest of the world, as was evident at a conference on Women and Politics in Asia, organised recently in Halmstad by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies and the Halmstad University.

Delivering the keynote address, Ms Drude Dahlerup, Professor of Political Science at the University of Stockholm, said that the Scandinavian countries did have a high representation of women in Parliament. In Sweden, it is as high as 45 per cent, in Denmark and Finland it is 38 per cent each and 36 per cent in Norway.

Ms Dahlerup recommended what she calls the "fast-track," or quota, system, which is precisely what the majority of our male politicians do not want for India. "This is the incremental track and will create a historical jump in the number of women in politics, so the opportunities on the fast track are much, much higher," she said, adding that already 75 countries have some form of reservation for women.

She said she is often asked what difference women in politics have made to the governance of a country. There were two ways to tackle this question. One, to turn around and ask what difference men have made, having ruled the roost for decades on end! But the second, and more complex, pertains to the age-old question of whether women constitute a single group. Obviously they do not.

And this is the "Achilles heel" that male politicians such as Mr Sharad Yadav of the Janata Dal, Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party and Mr Laloo Prasad Yadav of the Rashtriya Janata Dal are trying to exploit when they raise the issue of the benefits of any reservation for women being grabbed by the educated, forward-class women.

"I would say that women do not constitute a single group and why should women in politics make a difference? After all, women in politics do not form one group," says Ms Dahlerup.

Also, she added, when she is asked why women should be there in any government, "I would like to turn the question around and ask on what grounds can we argue that men can run a government better? How do you argue that the world's politics should be run by men? What are the special qualifications they have for this task?"

She would also rephrase this "tough question" and tell the person: "Maybe you have asked the wrong question. When you say women in politics do not make a difference, you are talking of women as a biological group. So I will rephrase that question: Under what conditions can women in politics make a difference?"

Adding her input to this discourse, Ms Pam Rajput, Head of the Department of Political Science and Centre for Women's Studies at the Punjab University, says that when activists, academicians, the media, and others demand reservation for women, they will have to address the issue of enabling or empowering the women who are elected to make a difference in society through the political power they wield.

She is optimistic that the Reservation Bill will go through, at least in the last session of Parliament before the next general elections. "We might not get 33 per cent, but we might get about 20 per cent," is her view.

Ms Dahlerup agreed that though the fast track can get a large number of women into political positions in a relatively short time, "I agree, of course, that quotas do not change other things. They do not change the reasons for the imbalance in power. They don't take away the obstacles and the problems women of the world face in their daily living. Also, we've all known some very bad examples of quotas and some of my friends from India and Bangladesh are very negative on what is going on in their countries.

" I don't say quotas will solve at all our problems, but I do believe that women can make a difference."

Warning that women's patience is running out, she said: "Around the Second World War, the acceptable minimum in government was one woman. Today, the acceptable minimum is 25 per cent and if we don't have that there will be repercussions, and we will continue to have old men running different countries!"

Referring to the token representation of women in powerful world organisations, especially those pertaining to finance and economy, Ms Dahlerup said acidly: "In organisations such as the APEC or NAFTA, we have one or two women in their red suits standing in the middle decorously. I hate that. I don't consider that a picture of women's empowerment."

Now let us look at a recent report of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), which shows that "though women have progressed relatively slowly in the last two years in the areas of education, literacy and employment, there have been encouraging signs of improvement in women's legislative representation. The increase in women's share of seats in parliament was attributed mainly to political measures in several countries, where quotas were legislated or adopted on a voluntary basis."

It says that though the demand has been repeatedly made in the last few years from international platforms about the need to have at least 30 per cent representation of women in "key decision-making positions... women are still, on the whole, largely absent from Parliaments. They account for about 14 per cent of the members in 2002, overall."

By 2002, only 11 countries had reached the 30 per cent benchmark, and they included Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Finland, Norway, Iceland, the Netherlands, South Africa, Costa Rica, Argentina and Mozambique. All these countries have used quotas in some form or the other. In Sweden, the major parties have 50 per cent quotas for women. Which leads Ms Dahlerup to make this comment: "We can even say that in Sweden there is 50 per cent quota for men in the major political parties!"

The flip side is that women's political participation is not low only in the poor or developing countries. The UNIFEM report says that in many "wealthy countries, women's political participation is well below that achieved in many developing nations.

The US, France and Japan, where women's share of parliamentary seats is 12 per cent, 11.8 per cent and 10 per cent respectively, lag behind 13 developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa, which is experiencing the greatest regional poverty in the world. In South Africa and Mozambique, women's share of seats is 30 per cent, while Rwanda and Uganda have 25.7 per cent and 24.7 per cent respectively."

(Response can be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in)

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