Tamil Nadu and Kerala will see Assembly Elections soon, while West Bengal and Assam are in the throes of it right now. Some important questions to ask this time round (and for all time) are about gender. Are parties committed to fielding women candidates? Are they committed to women’s safety and gender equality?
One group of women in Kerala has started a social media campaign urging people to vote for NOTA (None of the above) where no women candidates were being fielded. “More than 70 per cent of the women in the State are voters. But their representation in the assembly is less than 5 per cent. As per the list of candidates published by the political parties in the State for the forthcoming polls, there are very few women candidates. Also most of the seats offered to women are those in which the said party did not have much expectations of winning,” activist Divya Diwakaran, one of those leading the campaign, told The Hindu.
In Tamil Nadu, the Chennai-based Prajnya Trust points out that women hold barely 7 percent of seats in the outgoing Assembly. “The first list released for the upcoming elections by the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam lists 227 candidates of whom only 31 are women, about 14% of their list. There is no reason to believe other party lists will perform better on the criterion of gender parity.”
To ensure that gender parity is adopted these elections, Prajnya’s come up with a thoughtful checklist for political parties and voters, reproduced here in English and Tamizh. Check it out!