Women in legislatures

The first principle

Women are about half of India's citizens, so they are neither a minority, whose protection rests on numbers, nor a backward class, whose protection rests on social and educational disadvantage. Their absence from legislatures is caused by something else: the way parties, money and social expectations filter who reaches the ballot. Reservation for women therefore rests on a separate idea, the State's power under Article 15(3) to make special provisions for women, and its aim is not to protect a group but to correct a filter.

The core

Why women's reservation needed its own basis

• Not a minority. Minority safeguards answer the fear of a smaller group being outvoted. Women are not outnumbered, so the minority logic does not fit, and the framers did not treat them as one.
• Not a backward class. Articles 15(4) and 16(4) cover socially and educationally backward classes, and women of every caste and class face exclusion from politics. Reservation for women is therefore horizontal: it cuts across general, Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe seats rather than forming a separate vertical category.
• The Constituent Assembly view. Women members such as Renuka Ray argued against reserved seats for women, holding that equal citizenship and universal adult franchise would bring women into public life on equal terms. Experience over four decades showed that franchise alone did not change who got tickets.
• The constitutional route. Each extension of reservation was therefore written into the Constitution itself: Articles 243D and 243T for local bodies (1992), and Articles 330A, 332A and 239AA for the Lok Sabha, state Assemblies and the Delhi Assembly (2023).

Evolution from local bodies to Parliament

• Committee on the Status of Women in India (1974). Its report, Towards Equality, documented how few women held political office; its majority preferred women's panchayats to reserved seats in legislatures.
• Seventy third and Seventy fourth Amendments (1992). They reserved not less than one third of seats in panchayats and municipalities, and of panchayat chairperson posts, for women, with municipal chairperson posts reserved as state law provides; this was the first constitutional quota of its kind.
• The long Bill (1996 to 2014). The Constitution (Eighty first Amendment) Bill, 1996 proposed one third reservation in the Lok Sabha and Assemblies and was examined by a Joint Parliamentary Committee chaired by Geeta Mukherjee. Versions were moved again in 1998 and 1999 but stalled over the demand for a quota for backward class women. The 2008 Bill passed the Rajya Sabha in March 2010 and lapsed when the Fifteenth Lok Sabha was dissolved in 2014.
• Constitution (One Hundred and Sixth Amendment) Act, 2023. Known as the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, it reserves, as nearly as may be, one third of seats in the Lok Sabha, state Assemblies and the Delhi Assembly for women, including one third of the seats reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

How the 2023 Act works

• Commencement. Under Article 334A the reservation takes effect only after a delimitation based on the first census taken after the Act commenced, so it depends on the census now due in 2027 and the delimitation that follows.
• Rotation and duration. Reserved seats rotate after each later delimitation, and the reservation lasts fifteen years, which Parliament may extend by law.
• What it leaves out. It does not cover the Rajya Sabha or state Legislative Councils, and it has no sub quota for women of backward classes, the issue that had blocked earlier Bills.

Dimensions

• Representative. Women won 78 seats in the Seventeenth Lok Sabha (2019) and 74 in the Eighteenth (2024), about 13.6 per cent of 543, against 181 that one third would mean. Women are below one in ten members of state Assemblies on average.
• Electoral. In the 2019 general election women's turnout slightly exceeded men's for the first time, and in states such as Bihar women have outvoted men for several Assembly elections. Parties have responded with women centric welfare promises such as the Ladli Behna scheme of Madhya Pradesh (2023) and the Ladki Bahin scheme of Maharashtra (2024), but more votes have not yet produced more tickets.
• Party gatekeeping. Parties cite "winnability" to deny tickets, though Election Commission data across recent general elections show women candidates winning at a rate no lower than men. Women are often fielded in seats the party expects to lose.
• Barriers to entry. The cost of campaigns, the absence of party funds earmarked for women, online and physical violence against women politicians, and the burden of care work keep many able women out.
• Proxy politics. The experience of panchayats, where husbands sometimes act for elected wives, shows that seats alone are not enough, though studies of panchayats also show women leaders shifting spending towards drinking water and other services women ask for.
• Global. The world average share of women in national parliaments is about a quarter. Rwanda, with constitutional quotas, has a majority of women in its lower house, while Nordic countries reached high shares through voluntary party quotas rather than reserved seats.

Source: Election Commission of India, results of the General Elections 2019 and 2024; Constitution (One Hundred and Sixth Amendment) Act, 2023.

In practice

What civil society has done

• Training and leadership. Organisations such as Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) and The Hunger Project have trained elected women in panchayats in budgets, procedures and public speaking, building a pool of women who can move up to Assembly politics.
• Collective strength. Self help group networks, such as Kudumbashree in Kerala, have given women organising experience, savings and a base of supporters, and many members have contested local elections.
• Advocacy for the Bill. Women's organisations such as the National Federation of Indian Women and the All India Democratic Women's Association campaigned for the reservation Bill for more than two decades, and non partisan campaigns have pressed parties to field more women.
• Voter awareness. The Election Commission's Systematic Voters' Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP) programme, along with civil society drives, closed the gender gap in voter registration and turnout.
• Watchdog work. Groups such as the Association for Democratic Reforms publish data on women candidates, assets and criminal cases, which lets voters and the media question party choices.

Issues and way forward

• Delay. Tying the quota to census and delimitation postpones it by several years. Completing the census and delimitation on schedule is the only way to bring the reservation into force within the coming decade.
• Rotation. Seats that rotate after every delimitation may weaken a member's incentive to nurse a constituency. Longer rotation cycles or allowing reelection from an unreserved seat can soften this.
• Party practice. Reservation fixes the floor, not the culture of parties. Inner party democracy, women in party office and a share of party funds for women candidates would deepen the change.
• Backward class women. The absence of a sub quota remains a political demand; any change needs a further amendment and evidence of under representation.
• Safety and capacity. Action against harassment, including online abuse, and training through legislative and civil society programmes will help first time legislators work on equal terms.

Common confusions

• Article 15(3) and Article 15(4). Article 15(3) allows special provisions for women and children; Article 15(4) allows them for socially and educationally backward classes and Scheduled groups. Women's reservation rests on the first.
• Horizontal and vertical reservation. Vertical reservation divides seats among Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and others; women's reservation is horizontal, running across each of these.
• Local bodies and legislatures. Part IX and IXA reserve seats and chairperson posts for women; the 2023 amendment reserves only seats in the Lok Sabha and Assemblies, not posts such as Speaker or minister.
• Passed and in force. The 2023 amendment is part of the Constitution, but its reservation operates only after the next delimitation.

For the exam

• Keyword bank: Article 15(3), horizontal reservation, Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, Article 330A, Article 332A, Article 334A, delimitation, rotation, Geeta Mukherjee committee, Towards Equality, proxy representation, winnability, gender gap in turnout, civil society, self help groups.
• Practise the previous year questions on this topic →
• Use in an answer:
  • Introduction with data: "Women won 74 of 543 seats in the Lok Sabha in 2024, about 13.6 per cent, even as their turnout matched or exceeded that of men."
  • Introduction with a report: "The Committee on the Status of Women in India (1974) showed that universal franchise had not given women political office, a gap the Constitution addressed for local bodies in 1992 and for legislatures in 2023."
  • Conclusion: "The One Hundred and Sixth Amendment fixes a floor of representation; parties, civil society and voters must now build the pipeline that fills it with capable, independent women legislators."
  • Conclusion: "Thirty years of women in panchayats have shown that reserved seats change priorities; the task now is to see that they also change who holds power."