India’s politics must reflect the ambitions of its women

India’s political class often speaks of women with reverence and negotiates with them with caution.

- Shubhrastha

Every election celebrates the woman voter through promises of dignity, safety, welfare and empowerment. Every party now recognises that women are a decisive electoral force. But when the question shifts from women as voters to women as lawmakers, the system suddenly becomes procedural, hesitant and slow. What recently unfolded in Parliament on the question of women’s representation is a reminder of that contradiction.

Indian politics remains structurally patriarchal, not merely because men dominate it numerically but because power itself is shaped through masculine habits, networks, codes and incentives that exclude women while appearing open to them. Women are welcomed as symbols, beneficiaries, campaign faces and turnout multipliers but reluctantly as autonomous centres of authority. This is not merely a moment to debate numerical representation. It is a moment to ask whether India’s democracy is prepared to share power.