Month: November 2018

There’s no shortage of talent. For over two decades, women have occupied 33% of seats in panchayats and done so well that states like Bihar bumped up their quota to 50%.

Political parties that speak loudly about women’s rights should, by now, be reflecting this enthusiastic political participation by fielding more women. Right?(PTI)

Exactly 101 years after the 19th Amendment granted American women suffrage, a record 116 women, including the first Muslim, the first Native American and the youngest ever, were voted to the US Congress. India, too, has the highest number of women MPs in its history — 62 of 543 elected in 2014, nudging our representation up from a measly 11% in the previous Parliament to a measly 11.65 in this one.

The 2014 election was the one in which, to trumpeting headlines, female voter turnout surpassed male turnout in half the states and union territories. Women have since continued to outperform men as voters in several assembly elections, including Bihar and Odisha, point out Milan Vaishnav and Jamie Hinston for this newspaper.

Political parties that speak loudly about women’s rights should, by now, be reflecting this enthusiastic political participation by fielding more women. Right?

Wrong. In the Chhattisgarh assembly elections, women are 10% of all candidates, finds the Association of Democratic Reform. The UP elections last year had 9.2% women candidates who won 10% of seats. In Himachal Pradesh, women were 6% of candidates and won 5.9% seats.

There’s no shortage of talent. For over two decades, women have occupied 33% of seats in panchayats and done so well that states like Bihar bumped up their quota to 50%.

In a series for IndiaSpend, researcher Bhanupriya Rao documented how women sarpanches in Tamil Nadu are transforming villages by focusing on core issues, investing an average 48% more than their male counterparts in capital outlays like building roads.

Yet almost none graduated to state-level politics. Salma was that rare sarpanch who actually got a DMK ticket to contest the 2006 assembly polls but lost because her partymen worked against her. “Men don’t want to share,” she told Rao.

Winnability is the reply parties give when you ask them about their reluctance. You need money and muscle to win elections — one in every four of Chhattisgarh’s 90 constituencies has three or more candidates with criminal cases; 23% of candidates are crorepatis, says ADR — and women tend to have both in shorter supply than men.

And, so, elections remain an all boys’ club that does on occasion admit the odd daughter, daughter-in-law and sundry favourites of male dynasts.

When in power, these women don’t necessarily create space for other women. Despite her various schemes like the cradle scheme to curtail female infanticide, the late Jayalalithaa’s AIADMK in 2014 fielded only 10% women candidates, barely above the national average of 8%.

But clearly women matter, which is why Narendra Modi takes credit for banning triple talaq and implementing schemes like Ujjwala and Beti Bachao. It is why Rahul Gandhi promises to install women chief ministers in half of all Congress-ruled states. It is why Odhisa chief minister Naveen Patnaik promises 600,000 free smart phones to women’s self help groups.

Parties need to move beyond mixies and mangalsutras to talk about true power sharing with women. After all, we have for the first time in our history a real weapon: the ballot box.

Namita Bhandare writes on social issues

The views expressed are personal

Courage in a climate where the naysayers mutter about ‘false accusations’ and ‘why she didn’t speak up earlier’, where we shine the spotlight on victims rather than the accused and where we speculate about ulterior motives.

In all the thunder of a furious October have we paused to think about the courage it takes to speak up?(AP)

The complainant in one of India’s most high profile sexual harassment cases is telling me about the price of speaking up. A hostile work environment, mental stress, failing health, long and costly litigation and, despite it all, loss of a job, says the woman researcher who filed a complaint against RK Pachauri in February 2015 when he was still boss at TERI.

“Even today I worry about entering an office room and am scared to open my email,” she says.

Three years later, trial is yet to begin. But, says the researcher, “Sexual harassment by powerful bosses continues because we have a culture that turns a blind eye to it.”

In all the thunder of a furious October, have we paused to think about the courage it takes to speak up? Courage in a climate in which the naysayers mutter about “false accusations” and “why she didn’t speak up earlier”, in which we shine the spotlight on victims rather than the accused and in which we speculate about ulterior motives.

We don’t see those sleepless, anxiety-filled nights, the waiting at the lawyer’s chamber to discuss criminal defamation notices received, the mortification of knowing that conversation at the office ceases as you approach because they’re gossiping about you.

Speaking up also means calling for evidence, which might not exist — how do you prove that a man stares at your breasts while talking to you or asked you to share his hotel room on an outstation assignment?

In the course of this past week, two more women have spoken about allegedly horrific episodes of the past. In The Indian Express, Anjuli Pundit has detailed her harassment over seven months in 2015 at the hands of her boss, Rakesh Sarna, MD and CEO of Taj Hotels, who resigned in September 2017. Even though, she says, she worked in a company that believes in “women’s rights”, it was Pundit who was shunted to a back office job when she complained, a move she sees as a “demotion”, while her boss stayed on, unscathed.

The second woman, Pallavi Gogoi, has written in The Washington Post a personal account that accuses her then boss, MJ Akbar, of rape over a period of time. An editor’s note clarifies that Akbar has, through his lawyer, stated that the allegations are “false and expressly denied”.

Why come out now? Tweets Gogoi: “Those before me have given me the courage to reach into the recesses of my mind and confront the monster that I escaped from decades ago.”

I ask the woman researcher what had prompted her to speak up in 2015. To seek closure, she says. “Many of us don’t realise how powerful our voices can be, how we can make a difference to not just our lives but to society.”

I apologise to her for dredging up what are undoubtedly traumatic memories and she replies: “You don’t. You remind me the worst is over and how I found myself again.”

Namita Bhandare writes on social issues

The views expressed are personal