Women's Reservation Bill | What is the debate around it?

However, it seems that there still are mixed opinions on the subject.

Those who believe in the passage of the bill rely completely on the numbers. Out of a total of 543 MPs in the current Lok Sabha, only 62 are women. Essentially, that means one in every 10 parliamentarians is a woman, which is a skewed proportion considering that 49 percent of the Indian electorate consists of women.

In fact, a report by Factly suggests that between 1957 and 2015, the total number of women contesting elections has increased by a whopping 15-fold. During the same period, the number of male contestants witnessed a five-fold increase. In addition, the chances of women candidates winning has always been more than that of male candidates, the report points out. However, this does not reflect in the number of women in Parliament, warranting the need for the bill to be passed.

While it is easy to label those against the bill as being ‘sexist’, it wouldn’t be fair to dismiss them.

Those who are against the passage of the bill argue that reserving a constituency for a woman would translate to a loss of opportunity for the men who could have been better or more qualified candidates. This could also result in disregarding the choice of the voter.

In addition, the Women’s Reservation Bill comes in with the same shortcomings as any other law that renders quota to the underprivileged. It has been argued, that in a representative democracy, where 131 of 543 seats are already reserved for SCs and STs, an additional 33 percent quota will be a disproportionate representation of people’s wishes.

Those against the bill suggest that instead of endorsing reservation, political parties must incorporate a bottom-up approach of inducting more women in their parties so as to increase representation in Parliament.

The Women’s Reservation Bill was passed by the Rajya Sabha in 2008 and has been in limbo in the Lok Sabha for over a decade now.