With just 14% women Lok Sabha members, India still behind its neighbours

Although the numbers provide an impressive picture of the significant increase in women’s participation in Indian politics over the years, there is still a long way to go. India currently ranks 142 among 193 countries when it comes to women representation in Parliament.

Sucheta Kriplani, Ammu Swaminathan and Rajkumai Amrit Kaur (women members in first Lok Sabha) (left) Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, Smriti Irani and Mahua Moitra (women MPs in current Lok Sabha) (right) (edited by Angshuman Maity)

There is a powerful role that numbers can play in narrating the life of a democracy. As India votes in the 18th Lok Sabha elections, we dig out some key numbers that have shaped the country’s electoral politics over the decades. Data Proof, a seven-part series, will tell the story of elections in India through numbers.

Women’s representation in Parliament has been a matter of complex debate ever since the British were laying out provisions for self-government in India. Contrary to what one might expect, the three main women’s organisations in India at the time — the Women’s India Association (WIA), All India Women’s Conference (AIWC), and National Council for Women in India (NCWI) — were staunchly against any kind of special treatment of reservations for women in the Parliament. “To seek any form of preferential treatment would be to violate the integrity of the universal demand of Indian women for absolute equality of political status,” they wrote in a joint memorandum on the status of Indian women in the proposed new Constitution.

Despite their protest, the British government, under the Government of India Act (1935), granted 41 reserved seats in the provincial legislatures and limited reservation in the central legislature to women. Although they were critical of the idea of reserved seats, the women groups made the most of the provision and in the 1937 Indian provincial elections as many as 80 women went on to become legislators.

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Express illustrations by Abhishek Mitra; Visualisation by Vibha B Madhava

The Constitution of independent India struck down reserved seats for women, retaining quotas for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes alone. Consequently, in the first general election in 1952, women won 22 seats making only 4.4 per cent of the representation in Lok Sabha. Although, Vijay Lakshmi Pandit is known to have also won a seat in the elections from Lucknow, it is unclear if she served as an MP in the first Lok Sabha since she was at that time representing the country as ambassador and head of the Indian delegation to the United Nations. In 1953, she became the first female president of the UN General Assembly.

Despite their small numbers, the women members of the first Lok Sabha made the right kind of loud noise in the Parliament and introduced some of the most important bills in the history of modern India, including the Dowry Prohibition Bill introduced in 1951, which became an Act in 1961, and the Equal Remuneration Act, 1976, which was introduced in 1956 by Renu Chakravarty.

Among the women elected to the first Lok Sabha were Rajkumari Amrit Kaur representing Mandi in Himachal Pradesh, Sucheta Kripalani from New Delhi, and Ammu Swaminathan from Dindigul, Madras. It is worth noting that five women — Ganga Devi, Sheorajvati Nehru, Uma Nehru and Vijayalakshmi Pandit from the Congress and Shakuntala Nayar from the Jana Sangh — represented constituencies from Uttar Pradesh, making it the only state with the majority of women Lok Sabha members.

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Through the next seven decades, the number of women winning seats in the Lok Sabha elections have seen a consistent increase. In 1957, for instance, 27 women MPs made up 5.4 per cent of the total Lok Sabha members and in 1962, the number increased to 34 (6.7 per cent).

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Since 2009, the number of women representatives in Parliament has been above 10 per cent. In the 16th Lok Sabha election, 61 women were elected, making 11.2 per cent of the lower house.

Data visualisation by Vibha B Madhava

The 2019 elections saw the highest number of women MPs. Seventy-eight women today make up 14.2 per cent of the Lok Sabha.

Although the numbers provide an impressive picture of the significant increase in women’s participation in Indian politics over the years, there is still a long way to go. According to data compiled by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (an international organisation of national parliaments), India currently ranks 142 among 193 countries when it comes to women representation in Parliament. It is behind most of its neighbouring countries — Pakistan (137), Nepal (54) and Bangladesh (113).

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In a notable move to increase women’s representation in Parliament, the Narendra Modi government in October 2023 passed the long awaited Women’s Reservation Bill, reserving 33 per cent of Lok Sabha and state assembly seats for women.

With inputs from Srijana Siri

Adrija Roychowdhury

Adrija Roychowdhury leads the research section at Indianexpress.com. She writes long features on history, culture and politics. She uses a unique form of journalism to make academic research available and appealing to a wide audience. She has mastered skills of archival research, conducting interviews with historians and social scientists, oral history interviews and secondary research. During her free time she loves to read, especially historical fiction. ... Read More