WOMEN AS PEOPLEs REPRESENTATIVES 

Source- the Hindu

Introduction

• Literature on the workings of Parliament and its performance was scarce.
• Even fewer research works were done on women's performance in leadership positions or how they participate and represent people in political spaces.
• Sadia Hussain's article-' Performance of women in parliament: A quantitative study of questions b women members in Lok Sabha (1999-2019), draws attention to women's performance in Lok Sabha.
• It claims that women members act as silent dolls during the Question Hour in Parliament and they act as mere token representations in political spheres.

Women in Politics

• The article speaks a lot about women's position in Indian electoral politics.
• In the last two decades there was not a single women's movement that challenged patriarchal & gender norms.
• Education & wealth have aided women in political participation.
• Studies suggest that more women have started to organize themselves into economic groups and financial freedom has pushed them to be more politically active.
• The decreased gap in voter turnout between men & women is a positive sign toward sign gender inclusivity in the political sphere.
• 2019 general election was a historic moment for women's politics, as it saw 78 women elected to the lower house for the first time since independence where only 22 women were present in the 543-member Lok Sasha.
• But this number is still not representative of the actual proportion of women in the country.

• With more women representatives in Parliament, it is imperative to look at their performance.
• Women's performance during the Question Hour session becomes relevant as it is a space where legislators act free from party regulation.
• Substantive representation or acting in the interest of those represented defines the quality of a leader.
• It becomes imperative to analyse whether descriptive representation transforms into substantive representation.
• The questions asked during the Question Hour of Parliamentary sessions between the years 1999-2019 were specifically chosen as they involved 4 general elections with the government completing their full 5-year terms with two different ruling coalitions.
• As part of the evaluation, the number of questions raised by representatives, the Ministries under which they fell and the content of questions including terms like women, girls, rape, crimes against women, and maternal were collected & categorized.