India’s Parliament has approved landmark legislation reserving 33% of the seats in its powerful lower house and in state legislatures for women to achieve more equal representation, ending a 27-year impasse over the bill.
However, the wait is not ended because the new law will not apply to next year’s national elections.
It will be adopted in the 2029 national elections following a new census and redistricting after next year’s elections, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said during a debate in India’s Parliament’s upper house on Thursday night.
The lower house of Parliament adopted the measure 454-2 on Wednesday, and the upper chamber ratified it overwhelmingly, 214-0, late Thursday.
India’s decennial census was to be held in 2021 but was delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
All opposition parties backed the law and argued the delay was an insult to women. They urged that it be applied to the next national elections, which are scheduled to take place before May.
According to the Act, the reservation of seats for women would last 15 years and might be extended by Parliament. Only women will be allowed to run for 33% of the seats in the elected lower house of Parliament and state legislatures.
Women make up more than 48% of India’s 1.4 billion people but only 15.1% of Parliament, compared with the international average of 24%, Law and Justice Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal said. In India’s state legislatures, women hold about 10% of the seats.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party and the opposition Congress party have been trying to enact legislation to bring about gender parity and inclusive governance since 1996. They faced opposition from regional parties, which argued that seats reserved for women would be cornered by the educated elite from urban areas, leaving poor and less educated women unrepresented.
But opposition to the bill waned over the years, “giving way to broader symbolic politics where it is crucial to being perceived as responsive to emerging constituencies — like women,” the Indian Express newspaper wrote.
India remains a patriarchal society in which the social status of work done by women is often considered inferior to that done by men. Men also often enjoy greater rights than women.
