Partial victory for women

The women’s reservation bill has been endorsed by the Union cabinet last week and it is slated to be introduced in the ongoing budget session of Parliament. This comes after the departmental standing committee of Parliament recommended that the bill be presented in its present form.

That is, the reservation for women should be pegged at 33% and no modifications need be made with regard to demands by parties such as the Janata Dal (United), Samajwadi Party (SP), Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) which believe that there should be a quota-within-the-quota for women from the other backward classes (OBCs) in the bill. Proponents of reservation for women have been arguing that creating divisions among women on caste lines would defeat the purpose of women’s empowerment.

The issue is hotly contested one because it creates a powerful substantially numerous constituency and political parties are aware of its ramifications for electoral battles. And now, all the major parties — Congress, BJP, CPM —  are willing to join hands to push it through. The modalities could become an issue. As it stands now,  women-only constituencies will be rotated, like for reserved constituencies for Schedules Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

The presence of a substantial number of women in the Lok Sabha and in the state assemblies will certainly change the composition of the political class in quantitative as well as qualitative terms. The language of debates may change and so also the prioritisation of issues. These are expected and not guaranteed outcomes. The example to fall back on is that of women’s reservation in panchayats. The record is mixed at best. There were dramatic improvements in some of them and corruption and inefficiency remained at earlier levels in some others.

It would be unfair to demand that the presence of women should work as a cleansing measure in the political sphere. The reservation for women is not being made on the basis of biology and morality. The simple fact is that women are not proportionally represented in legislatures. However, questions must be raised about why political parties do not also look at internal reservations when it comes to distribution of tickets within their own parties. To a large extent, that would make such a bill redundant. For women, this is one more battle partially won.