Women lawmakers increase in numbers but at slow pace

Twenty seven years and one week after the first such bill was introduced in parliament on September 12, 1996, Union law minister Arjun Ram Meghwal introduced a bill to reserve one-third seats in the Lok Sabha, the state legislative assemblies, and the Delhi legislative assembly for women on September 19.

- Abhishek Jha

Data shows that in these past 27 years, some organic improvement in women's representation has already happened. However, even in 2023 (the failed attempts were made in 1996, 1998, 1999, and 2008), such a law will be a big and quick leap forward for women's representation, and more so for state assemblies than the Lok Sabha, according to data analysed by HT.

The bill introduced Tuesday also tries to address the concern that women elected from seats reserved for them will be from other than Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STS). It does this by proposing reservation across General, SC, and ST category of constituencies. Interestingly, data shows that the latter two categories have had higher representation of women since the 1990s.

Election results by gender show that India's first two elections had 4.5% women winners.