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Glass ceiling cracks: 2024 Lok Sabha polls mark new era as women candidates hit all-time high
With 800 women candidates in the fray, this also led to a decline in the number of seats having no women candidate to its lowest-ever of 152.
3 min read
Erode East Assembly bypoll will be held on February 5.With more and more women participation in electoral exercises, the 2024 Lok Sabha elections saw 800 women candidates contesting across 390 parliamentary constituencies, the higher-ever since the second general elections in 1957, showed an analysis of the data released by the Election Commission recently.
With 800 women candidates in the fray, this also led to a decline in the number of seats having no women candidate to its lowest-ever of 152. Comparable data was unavailable for 1951 and 1971. Over the years, however, the number of women candidates has been on the rise.
Women candidates contested in 372 seats in 2019, 377 in 2014, and 332 in 2009. In 2004, women candidates were in fray in less than half (249 of 543 seats) the country’s parliamentary seats. The figure was even below 200 in the 1980s, when women candidates contested just 127 to 146 seats of the 543 seats. In the 1957 LS polls, only 37 seats had women candidates.
According to the poll panel, a total of 8,360 candidates contested in 2024.
According to EC data, no women candidate was in fray in 152 constituencies of the 543 constituencies, down from 171 in 2019 and 166 in 2014. (see chart).
Of the constituencies having no female candidate in 2024 LS polls, the highest of 30 was in UP, followed by Bihar (15) and Gujarat (14). In the 2024 LS polls, 167 constituencies saw at least one woman candidate. There were two women candidates in 119 seats, 3 in 59 seats, 4 in 25 seats, 5 in 10 seats, 6 in 5 seats, 7 in 2 seats, and 8 in three seats.
Three constituencies — Baramati, Secunderabad, and Warangal — had the highest number of women candidates at eight.
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Of the 800 women candidates this year, only 74 won and 629 lost their deposits, data showed.
More and more women are coming out to vote, and in fact they again outnumbered men in exercising their franchise in 2024, in continuation of a trend from 2019. According to the poll panel, 65.78% of women voters cast their votes in 2024 (excluding Surat) as compared to 65.55% men. “Females outnumbered men in 2024 again like in 2019; this is only the second time in the history of GEs to Lok Sabha,” the EC noted.
Assam’s Dhubri seat recorded the highest women voter turnout of 92.17%, followed by Tamluk (West Bengal) at 87.57%, according to EC. The number of registered women voters stood at 47.63 crore of total 97.97 crore electors in 2024 LS polls, compared to 43.85 crore women electors in 2019. In 2024, number of female voters per 1,000 male voters saw a new high of 946, as against 926 in 2019, EC noted.
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