Indian legislators passed the first legislation considered in the country’s new Parliament building: the Women’s Reservation Bill, 2023. The bill will ensure that women occupy at least 33 per cent of the seats in state legislative assemblies and the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament.
The members of the upper house of the Indian Parliament have given their final approval to a bill that proposes reserving 33 percent of seats for women in the lower house and state legislatures. Over 200 members voted in favor of the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam (in Hindi, the ‘Salutation to Women’s Power’ Act), which aims to promote gender equality.
The bill’s passage “is a historic day”, said Asha Bajpai, a former founding dean and law professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, who is now a visiting faculty member.
“This law will now enable greater participation of women in policymaking and equitable governance at the state and national levels”, Bajpai said. “The inclusion of women will give the vast majority of the population a voice in how their lives should be run”.
The new law will not be implemented during the general elections in May 2024. The law is likely to come into effect in 2029, depending on the completion of India’s decennial census and the subsequent redrawing of the boundaries of all political constituencies.
Although opposition members of parliament support the bill, they are demanding its immediate implementation. Sonia Gandhi, the former president of the Congress Party, voiced her frustration, saying, “How many years must women wait – two, four, eight?”
In India, nearly half of the 950 million registered voters are women, but women’s political participation remains relatively low. After the most recent general elections, only 14 percent of India’s 788 members of parliament are women.
Similar legislation has been enacted in 64 other countries, ranging from Belgium to Rwanda. Rwanda’s 2003 constitution set a 30 per cent quota for women in elected positions, and 10 years later the country became the world’s leader for gender equality in politics, with women occupying 64 per cent of parliamentary seats.
Source: UNWomen