More women vote even as few form government

The rise in the share of women voters represents a compelling shift; it is in opposition to the marginalisation of women from all levels of politics and economy in the country. The representative share of women in politics has barely grown: Only 13 percent  of the total members of the 18th Lok Sabha are women, down from 15 percent  in 2019, as IndiaSpend reported on June 5. (This is an increase from 5 percent in the first Lok Sabha.) The number is lower in state legislative assemblies, where women constitute 9  percent  of the total members.

This is different for local governments – Panchayati Raj Institutions and urban local bodies or municipalities – where adoption of gender quotas in the early 1990s reserved one-third of electoral seats for women. The participation of women rose to 44.4 percent  (proportion of elected seats held by women), making India one of the countries with the highest participation of women in local governments. The adoption of the Women’s Reservation Bill this year, under which one-third of seats will be reserved for women in national and state legislative assemblies, seeks to address the wide gap in women’s political participation.

At the same time, women’s economic participation and empowerment in India remains low, compared to other developing countries, with the current female workforce participation at 37 percent, an improvement from the historically low figure of 23 percent  recorded in 2017. Women’s labour is used as insurance during periods of low income, meaning that they drop out of the labour force once they tide over this period, according to this 2021 paper, as IndiaSpend reported in April 2024.

With no other option for participating in public life in India, voting is one of the few things that does not threaten the patriarchal order and may explain why women vote in large numbers, according to Tara Krishnaswamy, co-founder of Political Shakti, a collective which advocates for women’s political representation. “As voting does not bruise the male ego they do not obstruct it, and it gives women agency to exercise,” she says. Evidence on the ground bears this out. Jyoti Devi may express her political opinions, but she, like many other women in rural India, does not have a mobile phone; only male members of her family own a phone.

A few factors have intersected to lead to the rise of women voters, apart from sustained work by the Election Commission in mobilising them. An overall increase in female literacy levels – the female literacy rate shifted from 39.4  percent  in 1991 to 64.63  percent  in the last Census of 2011 – along with the widespread reach of media in the decades in between, has turned voting into a voluntary act of self-empowerment for women, several studies point out.

Migration is another contributing factor for higher female voter turnout. In states with higher male migration to urban areas like Bihar and Jharkhand, women voters outnumber men, including in this election. Most migrants struggle to vote as they have to forgo work and daily wages to travel to their home states to cast votes, as IndiaSpend recently reported. This is a trend which has also been observed in reverse. In Mumbai, which is one of the biggest draws for migrants in the country, the proportion of male voters was much higher than female voters in this election.

Members of self-help groups (SHGs), which are collectives of women across India – are more politically engaged than non-members, research indicates. There are over 100 million women members under the National Rural Livelihoods Mission, the largest network of women SHGs in the world. Research shows women in SHGs are more likely to vote, choose who they will vote for, and attend Gram Sabha meetings. They also interact more with other women and wield influence on them to vote.

In the village of Hingot Kheria in Agra district, women who were members of SHGs were more empowered, mobile and likely to participate politically compared to women who were not. Anita, a mother of five, who lives in a Dalit basti in the village, said that she leaves her home to work on a potato farm, to go to monthly meetings of her self-help group and to go to the bank for SHG-related work. She wanted to exercise her right to vote even though with her care and work burden, she had very little time on most days. The region is at the heart of Dalit politics in the state and the Lok Sabha constituency seat of Agra is reserved for the Scheduled Castes.

Welfare politics customised for women

One of the reasons for the skewed representation of women in state and national legislatures is because of the inherent male-dominated structures of political parties, which exclude women on all fronts, from seat allotments to devolving power in the party. But the same political parties have discovered women as beneficiaries of welfare who can be persuaded to vote for them, as we explain below. This holds for other countries as well, where the “patriarchal welfare state” views women primarily as recipients of welfare. There is another reason why women are the targets of welfare by governments and political parties: Women are poorer than men, do not own assets, earn less than men or are not in the workforce at all.

In India, one of the earliest examples of targeting women through welfare is in 1982, when MG Ramachandran, as chief minister of Tamil Nadu, introduced the noon meal scheme (which went on to become the popular mid-day meal programme) which benefited both mothers and children, and reportedly swayed women to vote. Tamil Nadu, along with eastern states like West Bengal, Bihar and Odisha, were ahead in demonstrating that women can be a powerful voting bloc.

Under J Jayalalitha, women were offered 50 percent subsidy for buying mopeds and scooters, grinders and mixers, women-oriented healthcare schemes, bicycles for girl students, and gold coins for brides, and they, in turn, rewarded her by voting in large numbers.

In Bihar, women voters have responded to livelihood interventions, support for women entrepreneurs, reservations for women in government jobs, bicycles for girl students. Political analysts have repeatedly acknowledged women as the “silent force” in elections. At the national level, schemes for cooking gas, piped water, free grains and housing have successfully mobilised women to vote.

“Historically women voters respond to delivery rather than promises. Women’s vote has to be earned,” says Krishnaswamy.

More recently, with the rise in bank accounts and technology, governments have shifted towards conditional cash transfers to women that cover maternal and child health, education, nutrition, livelihoods, and pension. In a bid to outdo each other, or what has been called competitive welfarism, several states like Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal have rolled out unconditional cash transfers to women.

“The outreach by political parties to women is welfare-based and not based on their identity as women,” says Ruchi Gupta, a commentator on Indian politics and Executive Director at the Future of India Foundation. “In that sense, though women respond to welfare measures, voting has not necessarily deepened their political engagement or identity.”

The role of caste and community

Do women, who are largely perceived as beneficiaries by political parties, represent a homogenous vote or are they as divided along caste, creed and community lines as men?

In the villages of Agra and Fatehpur Sikri, it was not easy to determine if women had the autonomy to vote without the influence of their families. Family members tended to be present for every interaction and the family expressed their voting choices collectively based on their caste identities. “I will vote for the party that my grandfather asks me to vote for,” said 22-year-old Hema, who has a postgraduate degree but was tongue-tied in the presence of her family. Her family, which belongs to the Yadav caste, was vociferous in its support for the Samajwadi Party. In the village next to hers, which was dominated by Brahmins, Shikha, who was of similar age and education, expressed that she would vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party as her family wanted her to. In both cases, the young women were not allowed to interact without gatekeeping from the family.

Women’s interest and participation in politics are severely restrained by the absence of a fair share in decision-making at home, a survey by Lokniti shows.

Across states, there is some variation, as studies show women in northern and eastern India tend to rely more on their spouse’s opinion in their voting decisions, while women in south India report making the decisions themselves.

Ultimately in the voting booth, some women might overcome family pressure and exercise agency to vote independently. In the years to come, political parties have their task cut out in guessing what women voters want beyond the delivery of welfare.

Sunaina Kumar is a journalist and researcher. She works with the Observer Research Foundation in Delhi and focuses on gender. She is currently a Maitri Fellow at the Institute for Global Development, University of New South Wales in Sydney.

This report is republished with permission from IndiaSpend.org, a data-driven, public-interest journalism non-profit. It has been lightly edited for style and clarity.