The BJP’s return to power in Uttar Pradesh, making Yogi Adityanath the first chief minister in 37 years to return for a second consecutive term despite price rise, unemployment and the farmer agitation is being attributed in significant part to the woman voter.
There is no data yet on how women actually voted, but an Axis exit poll suggests that across caste and religion, 48% women vis a vis 44% men voted for the BJP in UP, giving the party a critical eight per cent vote share lead.
“A strong narrative of the BJP campaign was women as beneficiaries of various government schemes,” says Gilles Verniers, co-director of the Trivedi Centre for Political Data at Ashoka University.
Even though women bore the brunt of the pandemic in terms of household confinement and loss of jobs, various schemes from free rations, gas cylinders, and uniforms for children were able to reduce the pain. It forged a ‘connection and trust among the female vote base’, writes Yamini Aiyar, president, Centre for Policy Research.
Votes that count
Women voters have already established their presence and their ability to swing elections. In West Bengal, TMC chief Mamata Banerjee bucked anti-incumbency with 50% of the woman vote, compared to just 37% for the BJP. It was women voters again that powered AAP’s landslide victory in Delhi with a gender gap of nearly 11 percentage points with 60% women voting AAP, compared to 49% men.
Wooing the woman voter
That you can’t ignore women voters is no longer in doubt. Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi took a gamble by earmarking 40% of her party’s candidates for women. Other parties too, with the exception of the BJP, increased the number of women candidates with a total of 561 contesting 403 seats. Only 7% won.
The BJP alone fielded one woman less this time around, 45 instead of 46 in the previous election.
There’s a strange anomaly at play: women are courted as prospective voters through welfare schemes but not given adequate representation as candidates.
When they manage to get nominated as candidates, it’s usually for seats where they have no real chance of winning. In Punjab, for instance, the Congress gave only 9% of its tickets to women.
“Mobilising women voters has not converted to gender equity on the ground,” says Verniers.
If there’s an early lesson from UP, it is this. Expect more political parties to expand welfare programmes that benefit women. But don’t expect political representation to change significantly any time soon.
Do also read Roshan Kishore’s analysis here.
A GOOD WEEK FOR…
Jeevan Jyot Kaur
Despite a heap of cliches – giant killer, a David felling a Goliath—there can be no dispute over Aam Aadmi Party’s Jeevan Jyot Kaur’s stunning victory from Amritsar East where she defeated both Punjab Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu and the Akali Dal’s Bikramjeet Singh Majithia, neither of whom have ever lost an election. Kaur who has a degree in law has earned quite a reputation for herself in Amritsar due to her work on menstrual hygiene.
AND A LOUSY ONE FOR…
Mayawati
At 39, she was the country’s first Dalit woman chief minister. Twelve years later in 2007, she forged an impossible coalition of Dalits, Muslims and Brahmins. Two years later she made an unsuccessful bid for prime minister. But on counting day 2022, Behenji’s BSP managed to win just one seat – faring worse than even the Congress and Jansatta Dal. With a vote share of just 12.88%, its “core base may be deserting the party”, writes Rajesh Kumar Singh.
Gender Tracker
One in five women Harvard Business School graduates reported that their mental health was negatively impacted by work. Another 17% said they often experienced burnout with another 20% across racial groups and generations said they were very likely to look for a new job in the coming year.
Source: Harvard Business Review
Quote/Unquote
WATCH
Aged between 11 and 17 with Chinese, Mexican and Salvadoran ethnicities, the all-girl, Los Angeles-based The Linda Lindas sing about identity, friendship, power and cats. A year ago, their original Racist Sexist Boy took them to viral fame. Now they’re ready with their debut album, Growing up. The New York Times calls them “rock’s new feminist front”.
Listen here.
STORIES YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED
Women’s cricket team does India proud
Team India captain Mithali Raj continues to shatter records at the Women’s World Cup. On Saturday when the side took on the West Indies, she went past Australia’s Belinda Clarke for most appearances as captain in the tournament. In the same tournament, India pacer Jhulan Goswami broke the record for most wickets.
Karnataka HC asks doctors for greater sensitivity
The Karnataka High Court has criticised doctors for often being callous while examining minor victims of sexual assault and has asked for greater sensitivity while preparing medical reports.
FIELD NOTES
The good news: Women’s leisure time is up
It is hard to keep up with the number of theories explaining why Indian women have been dropping out of paid work: gendered norms about acceptable work, lack of safe and affordable infrastructure, motherhood and marriage.
Now, a new paper by the Centre for Economic Data and Analysis by Nicholas Li looks at how men and women spend their time over a 24-hour period. It finds that the minutes spent in work, both paid and unpaid, has indeed fallen not just for women but for men too.
Average minutes of paid work for women fell from 104 to 64 minutes while average minutes of total work, which includes time spent on unpaid housework, was down from 206 minutes to 140. For men, however, minutes spent on paid work fell by an even greater proportion.
The good news? Women are reportedly spending more time on leisure activity with the gender gap in leisure improving over time.
Read more here.
AROUND THE WORLD
Happy women’s day, don’t mind the pay gap
As companies fell over themselves to wish women a very happy international women’s day, a twitter bot, @PayGapApp took it upon itself to expose the hypocrisy and extent of the gender pay gap at these UK-based brands. The gap in pay was as high as 63.9% at Sweaty Betty (tagline: “empowering all women through fitness and beyond) to 59% at Boux Avenue, a lingerie brand. Started by copywriter Francesca Lawson and her partner software consultant Ali Fensome, the bot “left a trail of carnage” reports ABC, Australia.
For better or for worse
After laying off 900 employees over a zoom call at Christmas time, digital mortgage company, Better.com, headed by Indian-origin CEO Vishal Garg, embarked on a second sacking spree by laying off over 4,000 employees, including pregnant women, on International Women’s Day, reports MoneyControl.com. One employee made an appeal about the sacking of pregnant women: “Extend their medical coverage on an individual basis to carry them to term and cover postnatal care…consider how you would want your significant other to be treated in a similar situation.”
Guatemala Congress bans same-sex marriage
In a step back for gender rights, it has also prohibited the teaching of sexual diversity in schools and will raise prison sentences for women seeking abortion
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| That’s it for this week. If you have a tip or information on gender-related developments that you would like to share write to me at: namita.bhandare@gmail.com. |