More women legislators may be the way forward, but who will help them climb the political ladder?
India Today
The report that examined “comprehensive data on competitive elections to India’s state legislative assemblies,” found that women legislators were less likely to be criminal and corrupt, more efficacious.
A 2018 report published by the United Nations University identified significantly higher growth in economic activity in constituencies that elected women. The report that examined “comprehensive data on competitive elections to India’s state legislative assemblies,” found that women legislators were less likely to be criminal and corrupt, more efficacious, and less vulnerable to political opportunism. However, despite obvious advantages that women leaders have, their representation in mainstream politics remains low.
Among the five poll-bound Indian states — Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa, and Manipur — the highest percentage of sitting women MLAs is in Uttar Pradesh, at 11 per cent. The representation goes as low as four per cent in Manipur, according to the Association for Democratic Reforms. In the 2022 assembly elections, 12 per cent of those contesting in Uttar Pradesh are women, while it is only nine per cent for Goa and 10 per cent for Uttarakhand.
On an average, 9.1 candidates contest for a state legislature seat in India, of which, only 0.37 (four per cent) are female, according to a 2021 World Bank Economic Review report. However, India is not alone in the low representation of women in mainstream politics.
Female representation in legislative bodies is below 30 per cent in most regions across the world. In 2019, women members in legislative bodies were lowest in South Asia (18 per cent), and Middle East and North Africa (17 per cent), according to the Pew Research Centre.
The UNU report titled “Women legislators and economic performance” underlined that women legislators in India raised luminosity growth in their constituencies by about 15 percentage points per annum more than male legislators. This translated into a difference of about 1.8 percentage points in annual GDP growth.
Given that the average growth in India during the sample period was about seven per cent, estimates indicated that the growth premium for constituencies led by a female legislator was about 25 per cent.
At the crime front, women were found to be only about one-third as likely as men to be carrying pending criminal charges when they entered office. The report also found that for women legislators, the rate at which they accumulated assets while in office, was 10 percentage points lower per annum than it was for men.