General Elections 2024: What is on the minds of India's women voters?

The 2019 Lok Sabha polls saw more women come out to vote than men for the first time in 70 years of Independent India.

Ahana Sircar, a spirited 19-year-old first-time voter, says education and employment will heavily influence her pick in the upcoming general elections.

A Kolkata-based student of business administration at a government university, she is looking to vote for a candidate who is “rational, moderate, and secular in thinking” and willing to take steps to provide better access to jobs.

Out of the almost billion people who will cast their votes to pick the next government in India, a staggering 47.1 crore are women.

The number of registered women voters for the upcoming general elections has seen an increase of around 4 crore compared to the Lok Sabha polls in 2019, with the number of first-time female electors at about 1.41 crore surpassing their newly enrolled male counterparts at 1.22 crore, according to the data from Election Commission of India (ECI) with January 1 being the qualifying date.

Sircar, who is one such voter among the 1.41 crore new female electors, is looking for a party that also makes India safer for women.

“I personally think employment, safety and security are the main factors for me. Considering the fact that India's crime rate has been increasing and the fact that it is still not safe for women to go out alone at night is a major drawback, which must be highlighted and resolved,” she told Moneycontrol.

The 2019 Lok Sabha polls saw more women come out to vote than men for the first time in 70 years of Independent India.

Nalin Mehta, in his book The New BJP, writes that the 2019 Lok Sabha poll marked a watershed. Women voters in India had always lagged behind men since 1962 when the ECI started making available separate figures for men and women voters. In 1962, 62.1 percent of men voters turned out to vote as compared to 46.7 percent of women. The gender gap in the turnout was a huge 15.4 percent.

By 2014, the year Prime Minister Narendra Modi won his first national election, the gap had narrowed to just 1.5 percent. In 2019, when Modi won his second term — more women came out to vote. This was also the first-ever general election in which women voted more than men in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

Political parties have also identified this trend of rising participation of women in India’s electoral process that had traditionally been dominated by men.

Professor and Director of Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) Sanjay Kumar explains: “Just like the cause of the welfare of the Hindu majority community, no political party can dare to be seen as a party that does not care for the cause of women. Whether it is the BJP at the Centre or the DMK government in Tamil Nadu or the Congress regime in Telangana – all governments are rolling our measures aimed at the welfare of female voters in India,” Kumar said.

Betting Big on Women Vote

Among political parties accorded national status, the BJP has fared better than most when it came to fielding women candidates.

In 2004, it fielded 30 candidates, which rose to 55 in 2019.

Out of the 55 women candidates fielded by the BJP, 41 won. The main opposition Congress fielded 54 women in 2019, but only six of them emerged victorious.

More women voted for the saffron party in the less developed states. In Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana and Uttarakhand the BJP-led NDA had a net gender advantage.

The more developed a state, the less number of women votes were garnered by the BJP, with the party depending on more men than female electors in states like Delhi, Karnataka and Maharashtra, Mehta writes.

An analysis by data scientist Rukmini S, based on a CSDS-Lokniti survey, showed that the modest increase in the BJP’s vote share between 2014 and 2018 came from women voters.

PM Modi has assiduously built the constituency and has spoken about women more than he has about issues like defence, terrorism, Hindutva or Pakistan. Mentions of women in Modi's speeches as prime minister increased 114 percent between 2016 and 2019, according to the data compiled from Narad Index and collated by Nalin Mehta and Rishabh Srivastava in the book cited above.

In a study published in April 2021, economists Mudit Kapoor and Shamika Ravi found that in the 2020 Bihar elections women voters did not make a significant difference to the odds of NDA winning once poverty levels were adjusted. However, when the NDA was disaggregated into the BJP and Janata Dal (United), female electors had a significant impact in raising the odds of Nitish Kumar’s party winning within a constituency.

Nitish Kumar’s hold over women voters can be attributed to the several welfare schemes rolled out by the party for the gender ranging from poverty alleviation programme and reservations for them in panchayat and municipal bodies.

In fact, women played a key role in securing the BJP’s victory in Uttar Pradesh in 2022, a state otherwise riddled with caste politics. As per CSDS-Lokniti poll data, the saffron party secured a lead of 13 percent over the main opposition alliance thanks to female electors.

BJP’s victory in Uttar Pradesh, according to most experts, could be credited to women-centric welfare schemes like marriage grants and pensions as well as Yogi Adityanath’s perceived tough stand on law and order.

However, despite women’s prominent role in India’s electoral mandates, the country has a long way to go when it comes to ensuring parity in gender representation. In the first phase of elections on April 19, 2024, covering 102 Parliamentary constituencies in 21 states and Union territories, less than 10 percent of the candidates are women, according to data from ECI.

Given that the Women’s Reservation Bill seeking to provide 33 percent of seats in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies for female parliamentarians was cleared only some months ago, it would be key to see how parties fare on the metric of gender in the upcoming general elections.

Amping up mahila politics

Going beyond the numbers, one can see how political parties in India are amping up on welfare measures targeted strictly towards women.

Take for example BJP’s Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana’ (PMUY), a flagship scheme with the objective of making clean cooking fuel such as LPG available to the rural and deprived households that were using traditional cooking fuels such as firewood.

Primarily targeted towards women belonging to poor households, PM Modi’s government is said to have provided LPG connections to 10.27 crore beneficiaries as on March 1, 2024.

A News18 opinion poll, released in early March, found that the Ujjwala Yojana is one of the most popular schemes among the masses, with 70 percent of respondents saying they have immensely benefitted from it.

In fact, BJP’s victory in Madhya Pradesh in December was largely credited to its focus on women-centric policies, particularly the Ladli Behna scheme, which provided a monthly government aid of Rs 1,250 per month to women from low-income households.

The Congress party is not far behind when it comes to focusing on women-centric measures to mobilise votes. In the run up to Karnataka assembly elections, Congress promised Rs 2,000 per month to women heads of households if voted to power. Its focus on such policies was said to have contributed to its win in the state in May 2023.

And, unsurprisingly, a major focus of the recently unveiled Congress manifesto for the 2024 elections is women's welfare. From cash transfers to poor women to a promise to implement the reservation bill, the primary opposition party has kept its eye on garnering votes from female electors.

As Lekha Chakraborty, Professor at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) says, the programmes which emphasise last-mile connectivity by ensuring clean water, food security and clean fuel will definitely reap dividends in the coming elections, as women have the primary responsibility to ensure clean water and fuel.

What Women Want?

From religion to jobs to Brand Modi – several metrics have emerged as front runners on what clicks for India’s women voters, according to CSDS’s Kumar.

The Modi attraction – the prime minister as a factor of voting for BJP is also high among young women voters, he said.

“If you look at the way he (Modi) is able to establish a connect – he is the man, he is the leader, who cares about women. And the several schemes rolled out by the government like Ujjwala and Jan Dhan have sent out the right message. Even the Pariksha Pe Charcha initiative has established a personal connect with young women voters,” Kumar added.

But do the genders vote differently? According to CSDS’s Kumar, though the pattern of religiosity is slightly higher among women compared to men, overall, there is parity between them on the metrics they make their choices.

However, Kumar added, young voters, especially Gen Z women voters, are more concerned about education and unemployment compared to females of other age groups.

NIPFP’s Chakraborty concurs. “Plummeting jobs are a major concern when women are trying to cope with livelihood crisis. Ensuring a good employment policy per se is not enough as women are 'time poor' due to care economy burden. A simultaneous focus on strengthening the care economy infrastructure is crucial for increasing the labour force participation of women.”

Concerns about the lack of jobs among India’s youth aren’t surprising. According to a report by International Labour Organisation (ILO), in 2022 the share of unemployed youths in the total unemployed population was 82.9 percent.

And women not in employment, education or training amounted to a proportion nearly five times larger than among their male counterparts and accounted for around 95 percent of the total youth population not in employment, education or training in 2022, this ILO report released on March 26 said.

The 19-year-old Ahana Sircar has the final word: “I will pick the party, which ensures education and employment for the country. If you are a candidate who will take steps on these, my vote will go to you.”