Women Parliamentarians in India since 1991: Challenges and Opportunities

Authors

Vatsala Bhusry, Columbia University in the city of New YorkFollow

Keywords

Women, Political Activity, India, Development, South Asia, Political Participation

Abstract

India gained a new economic orientation in 1991 following the policy of economic liberalization. It offered the opportunities to close the gender gap in various fields including the political field as visualized in the original goal of the Indian constitution. However, there is an acute underrepresentation of women at the national political level and there is a lack of evidence-based research studies to analyze this gap. This study maps the political trajectories of 13 elected women leaders holding offices at the national level since 2019. To better understand the challenges and opportunities at both macro and micro levels they came across during their political journey through factual research, based on the primary data collected by interviews both structured and unstructured. The study is predominantly confined to women leaders of two national political parties: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Indian National Congress (INC). The paper extends the results and argues that patriarchy remained the stumbling block for the effective participation of women political leaders in the decision-making process at the national political party level; however, other factors include ‘power brokers’/intermediaries/micro agencies and the process that shapes the choices of women political leaders ranging from access to party ticket to contest the election to occupying the position of power within the party and the government.

Publication Date

5-26-2023

DOI

10.15760/hgjpa.2023.7.1.4

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/40132

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Bhusry, Vatsala (2023) "Women Parliamentarians in India since 1991: Challenges and Opportunities," Hatfield Graduate Journal of Public Affairs: Vol. 7: Iss. 1, Article 4.
https://doi.org/10.15760/hgjpa.2023.7.1.4