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India’s female political leaders: Find out how your state fares
- In this interactive, explore which states have the most women MPs and how this has changed over time
Of the 8,000-plus candidates awaiting results on Thursday, only 724 are women and even fewer are likely to get elected. In 2014, only 63 members of Parliament, or 11.6% of all elected MPs were women. While this ratio has improved marginally over the last two decades, Indian politics remains predominantly a man’s game and lags behind several countries, including Bangladesh and Brazil, in terms of women’s representation.
The extent of this male dominance, though, varies by state. For instance, in 2014 West Bengal voted 12 women MPs (28% of the 40 seats) but Karnataka voted 1 woman (3.6%). Between 1984 and 2014, Madhya Pradesh has enjoyed the greatest increase in women participation. Explore the progress of female politicians across states and over time in the interactive below.
In state politics, men dominate even more. Across Indian state assemblies, only 7.8% of all members (MLAs) were women in 2018 and this had actually decreased from 8.5% in 2016. Here, too, there are significant disparities across states and over time which can be explored in the interactive below.
Taken together, the data reveals why the Women’s Reservation Bill, which proposed reserving 33% of Lok Sabha seats to women, was drafted. The Lok Sabha though is yet to vote on it.
Note: By-election results are not considered. All data sourced from Election Commission of India.
Pratap Vardhan is Data Scientist at Gramener, a data storytelling company
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First Published:21 May 2019, 11:37 AM IST
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