Photographs of
Parliamentarians like Brinda Karat and Sushma Swaraj jointly
celebrating the introduction of the Women's Reservation Bill in the
Rajya Sabha are a strong indicator of the confusion over the issue of
women's rights and women's empowerment in India.
Whether we agree with their politics or not, no one will deny that both
Swaraj and Karat are personalities in their own right — no special
reservations gave them their seats in Parliament.
Given this, it is worth wondering whether they and other votaries of
the Bill have really thought through the long-delayed proposal to
reserve a third of the seats in both houses of Parliament and the
Assemblies.
Well-meaning feminism can be as harmful to the interests of women as
outright male antagonism. This is the problem with the Women's
Reservation Bill. It seeks to increase women's representation in
India's legislative bodies — women account for less than 10 per cent of
the Lok Sabha — the theory being that greater representation will
foster greater gender equality.
This is an admirable but ultimately ineffective solution that leaves
the serious issue of women's rights in India open to all sorts of
derision. Indeed, the Bill has long been opposed by politicians from
the far right and left for all the wrong reasons. The RSS and Shiv Sena
and politicians like Lalu Prasad and Mulayam Singh Yadav oppose the
Bill fearing that it will exclude, respectively, male leaders and
backward castes from future power equations.
But there are many good reasons this proposal should be opposed and
they have to do with the critical business of fostering genuine
commitment to women's rights in India. First, there is no evidence to
suggest that women in power guarantee women's rights. Nothing proves
this better than the Indian subcontinent. India, Pakistan, Bangladesh
and Sri Lanka have all had elected women rulers — India for as long as
15 years under Indira Gandhi. With the exception of Sri Lanka, these
countries' gender equality records are hardly worth boasting. India
logged in at 114 on the UN's 2007 Gender Gap Index, behind several
African countries and even Bangladesh (at 100).
Consider that we now have a woman president. Have we heard her talk
emphatically of improving the lot of women? This is an agenda she could
have made uniquely her own despite the real limitations on presidential
powers, just as A P J Abdul Kalam made technology and innovation his.
Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh is not noticeably a votary of women's rights,
not even Dalit women.
Many votaries for the Bill have argued that the reservation of seats
for women Panchayats has done enormous good for women in India. This is
not manifest, either: in both UP and Rajasthan, where gender equality
statistics are among India's worst, women Panchayats are often
blatantly proxies for their husbands and there is a strong possibility
that this model will be replicated in Parliament, leaving women open to
ridicule.
Second, Parliament is supposed to be a body (in theory at any rate)
that formulates laws and policies that govern the country. So talent
and ability rather than gender or caste should be valued above all else
(the fact that Parliament has ceased to be an influential body is
another matter altogether).
Forcing the gender issue on a serious decision-making body is as
illogical as periodic proposals to reserve corporate board seats or
executive jobs for women. Talent is, ultimately, gender-neutral and
Parliament should the last forum for affirmative action.
Although there is much to be done in terms of gender equality
legislation, it is also fair to say that India's male-dominated
Parliament has passed some reasonably robust laws in terms of dowry,
rape and gender discrimination. (Karat herself has been an effective
campaigner for women's rights within this "restrictive" paradigm.) It
is the implementation and interpretation of these laws that leaves much
to be desired. Pre-natal gender selection, for instance, is banned in
India. Yet some of the country's most prosperous states record the
worst male:female ratios precisely because they openly flout these laws
with impunity.
Giving women a greater voice in society requires much more than
proforma responses. Modern history has shown a clear link between
women's empowerment and economic progress. Governments that focus on
this issue will find that gender equality will become a natural feature
of society rather than an artificial construct open to male opposition.
Evidence of this is already showing up in fast-growing businesses like
banking, accountancy, media and information technology where sheer
demand is cracking glass ceilings faster than any job reservation could
have done.
This does not preclude the scope for interventionist policies — but
only provided they bring real gains. Any government committed to
women's rights would do better to work at positive discrimination at
the grassroots. Education and health support to the girl-child, who is
disappearing with alarming speed from states like Haryana and Punjab,
in low-income families, is one way of approaching the issue. In the
long run, an educated and healthy female population is a better
guarantor of gender equality than reservations in Parliament.
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