As the world is gearing up to celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8, various programs and platforms, such as Difficult Dialogues or Women’s Forum, are organised to ponder over what major steps should be taken to get women into the mainstream, empower them and ensure them their full rights. Women, all over the world, are conspicuous by their miniscule presence in political life of a country. Especially young women have, for a long time, been excluded from decision-making processes. Besides various reasons like restrictive cultural practices, institutional barriers, and disproportionate access to education, healthcare and resources which push women to the periphery, there are more specific reasons which create barrier for young women to run for political office. The role young women can play in politics is underestimated.
This is the time when they have energies, new ideas and strong enthusiasm to put these new ideas into action. Entry at young age also creates opportunities for them to create space for them in larger political playfield. More years in politics also helps in accumulating experience and thus understanding and playing their role better.
The most accepted definition of ‘young people’ or ‘youth’ refers to a group of people whose age is between 20 to 40 years. However, when it comes to women, the bias is obvious, where there is differential treatment meted out to women, and young women are normally categorised between age group of 20 to 35 years. Even accepting the fact that women have to carve a niche for themselves within the age of 20 to 35 years, in reality this is also the time when women are burdened with domestic works, and are expected to take full responsibility of child bearing and rearing. The family members, specially the menfolk, assume that family and children require undivided attention by these women, and besides being a wife and a mother, the woman cannot think of taking upany other role.
Also for young women, the fear of violence and character assassination looms large as politics is often misconstrued as a dirty game. Political Parties, which otherwise are desirous of garnering women’s support for campaigning for the party’s win, are hesitant to give tickets to women for contesting elections. Lack of sustained support from family, peers or political party, creates ideological and psychological hindrances that force the young women to shy away from politics.
However, recent trends in the world as well as in India are exploding the myth that discriminating practices against women are irreversible. There is a growing recognition world over that young women should be motivated to participate in electoral processes. In Portugal, there was project launched ‘Women Can Do It’, specifically for young women, which emphasised on training toolkits, awareness raising and its slogan was ‘Women make democracy better’. Ireland undertook similar initiative for motivating young women to contest at local levels.
In Trinidad and Tobago a training programme was launched in 2013 to ‘Train, Run, Win and Lead’ to empower women to fully participate in leadership positions. Constitutional provision for gender quotas to ensure representation of women at grassroots is a strategy adopted in some countries. In 1994, India introduced 33% reservation which, not only enabled more than 10 lakh women in general, to take leadership positions at the Panchayat level, but also young women were able to break the glass ceiling and enter the political spheres. This change has occurred across various states in India in varying degrees, indicating that it is not only 33%reservation, but also existence of other enabling factors which create the corridor for young women to enter Panchayat politics.
A research conducted to study the participation of young women in the Panchayat elections held in June 2017 in Goa, makes interesting reading. The total seats reserved for women were 489. A total number of 2211 women contested both for reserved as well as for general seats. 561 women got elected, of which 72 are from general category, which is a very positive trend. A large number of women are young, that is between the age group of 21-35. Thus the elections broke the myth that young women are not interested in entering politics. Out of the 30 young women panchas interviewed, 10 were graduates, 4 had cleared HSSC and 16 were SSC passed, thus signifying that education has an important share in helping these women to lead at grassroots.
The existence of Uniform Civil Code and the cultural progress the state has achieved have also accelerated the process. In the sample, there were two young widows who have won, and they credited their success to the people of their village, who not only motivated them to fill in the candidature, but gave all kind of support and helped them to win elections. Young unmarried women Panchas were in all praises for their father who was the support pillar for them. In normal circumstances, if an unmarried girl even whispers her wish to join politics, she is discouraged by her family members, and ‘advised’ that she should not get involved in these kinds of ‘fads’ and should concentrate on acquiring qualities which can make her a good homemaker. Some ‘benevolent’ parents may tell their daughters to pursue their political carriers after they get married and with the permission of their husband. In such scenario, the unmarried women Panchas crediting their father for their success reflects that a positive father-daughter relation has the strength to bring in revolution for women empowerment in Goa.
To sum up, it is necessary to provide more congenial environment for young women to enter politics at grassroots as their entry will give feminine perspective to politics, which is the need of time.
(The author is Associate Professor in Political Science, Govt. College, Khandola, Marcela).
