Women sway polls, men take charge: Why Nari Shakti remains a distant dream – explained | India News
The Bihar Assembly elections were widely celebrated as a democratic milestone. With an overall voter turnout of 66.91%, the highest since 1951, and women turning out in unprecedented numbers, the state appeared to signal a quiet transformation.Female voter turnout stood at an impressive 71.6%, far surpassing male turnout at 62.8%. On the surface, this looked like a clear victory for women’s political participation. But a closer look at who actually wields power in Bihar raises uncomfortable questions about whether this enthusiasm translated into real political gains.
Is Bihar really a win for women?
Despite women driving the electoral surge, representation in the Assembly remains limited. Of the 243 elected MLAs, only 29 are women, just under 12%. This mirrors a long-standing pattern: women show up decisively at the ballot box but struggle to cross the gatekeeping barriers of party nominations and electoral success.The picture becomes even starker in the executive. The Nitish Kumar cabinet has only three women ministers out of 27, amounting to just 11%. In effect, women voters powered a historic election, but men continue to dominate the institutions that shape policy and governance. The candidate landscape explains part of this imbalance. According to ADR data, only 254 women, around 10% of all candidates, contested the 2025 Bihar elections, compared to 2,344 men. This figure has barely changed from the 2020 elections, where women also made up just 10% of candidates. Structural exclusion at the nomination stage ensures that even high voter turnout cannot significantly alter outcomes. Representation of the third gender remains almost nonexistent, with only two candidates contesting.“Once the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam is implemented, parties will have to give tickets to women. That is how women’s representation has increased in other countries,” said Zoya Hasan, Professor Emerita, Jawaharlal Nehru University.Equally troubling is the quality of political choices on offer. Ninety-four candidates declared cases related to crimes against women, including five accused of rape. That such candidates continue to secure tickets highlights the disconnect between women’s electoral participation and the political system’s responsiveness to women’s safety and dignity.
14% represent the 50%
The parliamentary numbers reveal the scale of democratic under-representation women continue to face. While women constitute nearly half the population, they occupy only about 14% of seats in the Lok Sabha. The journey has been one of slow and incremental change. In 1957, women made up just 3% of candidates contesting general elections; by 2024, that figure had risen to 10%. Electoral success has improved, but modestly. From 22 women in the First Lok Sabha and 27 in the Second, the number increased to 78 in the 17th Lok Sabha and stands at 75 in the 18th—still a fraction of proportional representation.The Rajya Sabha shows a similar pattern. Women members increased from 15 in 1952 to 42 today, accounting for around 17% of the Upper House. These gains, while notable, underline how access to Parliament remains structurally limited for women, especially when compared to their electoral participation and demographic weight.
The fight for a seat in the Parliament…goes on and on and on
In 2023, India took a significant legislative step toward addressing gender imbalance in politics with the passage of the Constitution (One Hundred and Sixth Amendment) Act, popularly known as the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam. The law mandates the rotational reservation of one-third of seats for women in the Lok Sabha and all State Legislative Assemblies, including that of the National Capital Territory of Delhi. Framed as a historic corrective to decades of underrepresentation, the amendment seeks to institutionalise women’s presence in legislative decision-making across the federal structure.However, the reform’s impact remains deferred. The legislation is scheduled to come into force only after the publication of the next national census, the timing of which is yet to be announced. Once implemented, the reservation will remain in effect for 15 years. Notably, the amendment excludes the Rajya Sabha, India’s upper house of Parliament, where women currently account for just 13% of members, underscoring the partial nature of the intervention.At the time the bill was passed, women constituted around 14% of the Lok Sabha, the highest proportion since Independence but still well below global benchmarks. According to a United Nations report, the global average for women’s representation in national parliaments stood at 26.5%, while Central and Southern Asia averaged 19%, highlighting India’s lag despite incremental gains.
Like ‘Pradhaan-patis’, will reservation Act lead to ‘MP-patis’?
“Panchayats operate at a different level of governance altogether; the logic that has enabled proxy representation or Pradhan-Patis there cannot be transposed to higher legislatures,” Hasan said.Hasan further noted that the “political arena” in which the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha function is “fundamentally different, leaving little scope for phenomena such as ‘MP-patis.'”India has about 14.5 lakh elected women representatives in Panchayati Raj Institutions, forming nearly 46% of all local representatives, an achievement unmatched globally. Twenty-one states have gone further, reserving 50% of PRI seats for women, exceeding the constitutional minimum of 33%. Yet this grassroots success has not translated upward, reinforcing a paradox at the heart of Indian democracy: women lead locally but remain marginal nationally.Recent global assessments suggest that progress has not only stalled but slightly reversed. The Global Gender Gap Report 2025 ranks India 131st, with an overall gender parity score of 64.4%, a drop of three places from the previous year. Political empowerment remains a key area of concern.Female representation in Parliament declined from 14.7% to 13.8% in 2025, while the share of women in ministerial positions fell from 6.5% to 5.6%—continuing a downward trend from the 2019 peak. Against this backdrop, the women’s reservation law represents both a long-awaited promise and a test of political will, with its eventual implementation likely to shape India’s gender parity trajectory in the years ahead.
Around the world, story not very rosy
Despite decades of advocacy and incremental reform, women remain significantly underrepresented in political power structures across the world.The Women in Politics: 2025 map, released by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and UN Women, offers a snapshot of the global gender gap in political leadership as of January 1, 2025, underscoring how male dominance in decision-making continues to slow progress toward political equality.According to the data, women serve as heads of state or government in just 25 countries, reflecting the narrow reach of female leadership at the highest executive levels. In national legislatures, women account for 27.2 per cent of MPs worldwide—an improvement over previous decades, but still far from parity. The imbalance is even more pronounced within executive branches: globally, fewer than one in four cabinet ministers are women, with women holding only 22.9% of such positions.The distribution of power within cabinets further highlights structural inequities. While women are more likely to be assigned portfolios related to human rights, gender equality, and social protection, men overwhelmingly control ministries that shape national security and economic direction, including foreign affairs, finance, home affairs, and defence. This gendered division of political labour reinforces longstanding hierarchies, limiting women’s influence over core policy domains.
Are men still writing laws?
Findings from the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and UN Women, released in early 2025, showed that men continued to dominate political leadership worldwide, despite three decades having passed since the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action laid out a global roadmap for women’s rights.At the start of 2025, men outnumbered women by more than three to one across executive and legislative positions. Women’s representation in national parliaments had inched up only marginally, reaching just over a quarter of all lawmakers globally. In contrast, women’s presence in government roles moved in the opposite direction, reflecting how gains in legislatures have not consistently translated into executive power.Female political leadership at the highest level remained the exception rather than the norm. Only a small number of countries were led by women, with Europe accounting for the largest share. While 2024 marked several historic firsts, more than half the world’s countries had still never had a woman head of state or government.Hasan pointed out that one of the reasons behind rise in female representation in politics in Europe and the States, has been their increased representation in decision-making roles within political parties. “In Europe and the United States, efforts to increase women’s representation in legislatures have followed a two-pronged approach. One strategy has focused on enhancing women’s presence in decision-making roles within political parties, which in turn has contributed to a rise in the number of women parliamentarians,” the JNU professor noted.Cabinet-level representation offered a similarly mixed picture. Fewer than one in four cabinet ministers globally were women, and the number of countries with gender-equal cabinets had declined compared to the previous year. Regional disparities were stark, with Europe and the Americas showing higher levels of representation, while large parts of Asia, Central Asia and the Pacific continued to record very low participation by women in executive leadership.
