Whenever the subject of women in politics comes up, as it has in recent days in the context of the Women’s Reservation Bill, a distant recollection of a bizarre political campaign from the 1990s in Tamil Nadu reduces me to a quivering, nervous wreck to this day.

COMMERCIAL BREAK
SCROLL TO CONTINUE READING

When I tell you that the memory that is triggered is of a line of Amazonian women with their saris hoisted above their waists in public in Chennai, I daresay you will empathise with my traumatised state.

When I further tell you that this ‘flash mob’ was drawn from the women’s wing of a regional political party upon orders from their megalomaniacal leader and chief minister of the day J Jayalalithaa, evidently to subject a male political opponent to some ritual humiliation with an extravagant display of ‘yoni power’, you will also understand why I am considerably underwhelmed by the promised prospect of having more women in electoral politics.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not arguing against having more women in politics. God knows women are under-represented in electoral politics — and, let’s face it, the preponderance of men in positions of political power in India hasn’t exactly been a shining advertisement for good governance.

A political humorist once said, only half in jest, that American presidents do to their country what they should be doing to their wives; a succession of Indian politicians have, likewise, demonstrated over the past 60-plus years that they do to the country exactly what they do to their wives — or, on occasion, their mistresses, some of whom also get a piece of the political action. 

Yet, it appears to me that all this premature celebration over the mere passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill betrays a heightened — and unrealistic — expectation that having more women participate in electoral politics will somehow miraculously cleanse the political system, or at least do wonders for women in society.

That fallacy is easily disproved: for instance, the rise of Mayawati as the champion of Dalits hasn’t really led to the political and economic empowerment of Dalits in general; in fact, there is a case to be made that they are probably worse off than they might have been under an enlightened leader even if s/he were not a Dalit. 

In the same way, greater participation by women in politics will not, in itself, be sufficient to elevate women’s standing in society. Indeed, if, as happened under Jayalalithaa, ‘woman power’ is characterised by the public hoisting of saris above the thresholds of decency, it represents a perverse debasement of gender politics to the detriment of all women. 

The irony of this is that studies have established that political affirmative action in favour of women — of the sort that is being contemplated — does have the potential to influence for the better prevailing societal attitudes towards women in general — provided such women leaders deliver.

One study of the reservation system for women in the Indian political context, undertaken by researchers at Northwestern University, MIT, and the IMF, concludes that if women perform better than anticipated by voters, then voters would be more willing to elect women candidates in future elections, even in the absence of quotas.

In any case, it makes a persuasive case to argue that mandated exposure to female leaders — facilitated by electoral quotas for women — does help villagers understand that women can be competent leaders. The experiences of other countries that have similarly experimented with electoral quotas for women are diverse but illustrative.

In 2008, Rwanda became the world’s first country where women outnumber men in Parliament; that bit of gender history was made possible by a 30% quota for female MPs under the Constitution drawn up following the genocide in 1994. The violence-weary country perhaps looked to women to heal it, and it has worked.

However, in Spain, one of the more gender-equal societies, gender quotas have had only a limited impact on the number and quality of female senators. That is because political parties have used female candidates as pawns chosen according to how their presence in the list would affect gender statistics and male candidates’ possibilities of success.

The bottom line, to me, is this: politics needs good, enlightened people — men and women; and in the absence of enlightened leadership, gender is irrelevant in politics, given that the few women we have seen in power in India have proved that corruption and venality are gender-blind, equal-opportunity pursuits.

I would like to be proved wrong, of course. But if the order ever goes out for saris to be hoisted, I’m going to spare myself some trauma and firmly shut my eyes.