Batting for early passage of the women's reservation bill, Vice-President Hamid Ansari today asked parties to voluntarily increase the nomination of women candidates in elections till the legislation is enacted.
He noted that only 146 women were fielded in 2014 general elections by national parties, which was 9.17% of the total 1,591 candidates and regretted that the gender profile in legislatures and Parliamentary panels on important issues remained woefully unbalanced.
"Giving women constitutional rights to suffrage is one thing but its tangible impact in raising women's power and influence in polity and society is an altogether different matter," Ansari said while addressing a two-day maiden National Conference of Women Legislators here.
Also Read
The Vice-President said despite 47% of the total voters being women during the last Lok Sabha elections, patriarchy and social norms have hindered its full reflection in positions of power.
He said increase of women representation at panchayat and local bodies level to 43% has not led to their commensurate increase in legislatures both at the Centre and in states as gender profile in the Parliament remains "woefully unbalanced" with 12% of the total members being women.
"...All political parties need to extend their support to ensure that the Constitutional Amendment Bill to provide for 33% reservation to women in the Lok Sabha and state Legislative Assemblies is not delayed further. Until then, at least they need to expand their pool of women candidates," Ansari said.
He said said out of a total of 1,591 candidates fielded by the six national parties, only 146 constituting 9.17% were women. "This is certainly not very encouraging," he said.
The Vice-President also felt that most women legislators are usually nominated only in parliamentary committees dealing with issues related to women and stressed both the lawmakers and the party leaderships need to work so that they can have a greater say in all matters.
"This also seems to be sustained by data on their membership of parliamentary committees though the responsibility for this state of affairs is to be shared by party leaderships who, in the final analysis, do the nominations," he said as he gave data on women members on various committees of the Parliament.
The Vice-President said committees on Finance, Estimates, Defence and Home Affairs have only seven women members which is 6% of their total strength of 124 while in contrast, the Joint Committee on Empowerment of Women has 28 women members out of the total strength of 30 members, constituting a whopping 93%.
"These facts call for some correction," he said, adding that the respective political parties must broad base their nomination while nominating their women members to the committees, statutory bodies as also while selecting speakers to participate in debates in the House on other areas of public concern.
Ansari said leaders and whips of parties in the House need to overcome their own gender bias in engaging the women in different parliamentary roles and added that women members themselves need to show interest and contribute meaningfully to the debates.
"Several studies show that women's political participation results in tangible gains for democratic governance, including greater responsiveness to citizens' needs...Thus, women's contribution is crucial to building a strong and vibrant nation. We can ignore it at our own peril," he said.
Lauding the increase in the representation of women at local bodies through reservations, Ansari said this initiative redefined gender representation in decision-making process at the grassroots level.
"However, the introduction of statutory requirement of meeting new eligibility conditions such as certain level of education, number of children or other criteria to fight Panchayat elections in many states is loaded against women. This calls for serious reflection," he said.
