After years of fruitless attempts to pass the legislation, India’s Lower House of Parliament approved a bill that would more than double the proportion of female lawmakers in its ranks.
When the new law is implemented, which may not happen until the end of the decade at the earliest, women will have one-third of the seats in India’s lower house and state assemblies.
It wouldn’t go into force before the national elections of next year, but it will give Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party a boost in its already dominant position before those polls. Only two lawmakers abstained from the vote, which received a total of 454 in favor.
That came after six earlier attempts to pass the bill stalled in the decades since its first introduction in 1996, with sometimes vehement resistance from lawmakers.
In 2010, Mulayam Singh Yadav, the chief minister of the state with the largest population in India, advocated against passing the measure because it would force men to wolf-whistle at their female parliamentary colleagues.
It is noteworthy that, as of the most recent national election, only 104 of India’s 788 MPs, a little more than 13%, were women.
These statistics highlight the underrepresentation of women in Indian public life as a whole. According to government statistics, little under one-third of Indian women of working age participated in the formal labor force in 2016.
A two-thirds majority in both chambers of parliament is needed to pass the bill, which calls for a constitutional modification that would set aside one-third of all positions in government for women.
Due to the measure’s widespread political support, its passage through the upper chamber is anticipated to go smoothly.
The quota wouldn’t go into force until India redraws its electoral borders after completing the massive task of conducting a census for its 1.4 billion citizens, the last of which was scheduled to take place in 2021 but was postponed indefinitely owing to the coronavirus outbreak.
