Caucus to press for more women in Parliament

Ahead of the Winter session of Parliament, a group of women are trying to drum up the conversation for more women representatives in the House.

And to this end, the India Women's Caucus is bringing together women from diverse sectors for a convention to deliberate on ways to go about it on December 8 in Bengaluru.

The Caucus, which has "women leaders from political parties, intersectional researchers of gender, women pursuing careers in politics, grassroots activists working with women in local bodies, journalists" among others, aims to bring in more women elected as MLAs and MPs.

Tara Krishnaswamy of the Citizens for Bengaluru, which is organising the event, said that the Caucus is a non-partisan one and does not discriminate on the basis of ideology, party, rural-urban divide, etc. She said that leaders from various political parties, including Sushmita Dev, president of the Congress's women's wing, the Mahila Congress, will attend the event.

While women have a reservation of 33 per cent in local bodies, the demand for 33 per cent reservation for women in Parliament has seen innumerable blockages. The Women's Reservation Bill, was introduced in the 15th Lok Sabha, but lapsed due to the dissolution of the Parliament. It was passed in the Rajya Sabha on March 9, 2010.

Women make up for about 11 per cent of Members of Parliament, and in Assemblies, their proportion varies from nine per cent to over 50 per cent, as is the case with states such as Karnataka. In the recently-held Karnataka Assembly elections, while a handful of women were fielded by parties, there were over 100 independent women candidates.

"This points to the fact that parties deliberately do not field women. In the past five decades, a million women have held posts in local bodies. And pure statistics will tell you that even if 10 per cent were to make it to the Parliament, there should have been well above 33 per cent women there," said Krishnaswamy.

She said that the idea took flight earlier this year and the Caucus held its first event in Goa in October, which was attended by 60 women. Krishnaswamy, along with journalist Rajeshree Nagarsekar, founded the Caucus.

The Caucus has found support from prominent women, including journalists Ammu Joseph, Nisha Susan, Dhanya Rajendran, Bhavdeep Kang, Cynthis Stephen, and Vidya Subrahmaniam, as well as former Oxfam CEO Nisha Agarwal, CERI co-founder Jyoti Raj, professor Padmaja Shaw, political analyst Swarna Rajagopalan, and founder of Gender and Politics Bhanupriya Rao.

The Caucus now plans to have chapters in all major cities, and preparation for a convention in Delhi is in the works. "Women groups from Mysore, Visakhapatnam and Bhopal have already expressed interest in chapters," she added.

In addition to that, the Caucus will also make presentations to different political parties to advocate more tickets for women. Next in line is a meeting with Congress's manifesto committee in Bangalore, slated for the first week of December.