The glass ceiling that won’t break

Srinagar, Sep 17: Despite much rhetoric about gender equality and women's reservations by the major political parties, the distribution of mandates among the female folk in the J&K assembly polls points to their failure to walk the talk.

Among 902 contesting candidates for 90 assembly seats, only 42 women have got the mandate from political parties or are contesting independently - a total of just 4.65 percent of the total contesting.

This sad statistic is merely the beginning of a larger, more disturbing tale.

As it frames up with the major political actors in play including the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Congress, National Conference (NC), Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Peoples Conference (PC), Apni Party, and Democratic Progressive Azad Party (DPAP) into its fold, the statistics paint an even bleaker picture.

These mainstream parties have, together, fielded just eight women, or a meagre 0.89 percent of the total candidates contesting.

The BJP and Congress have fielded only one woman candidate each in J&K, while the NC has fielded three candidates, PDP two, Apni Party one, and PC and DPAP zero.

Compared with this, 21 women are contesting as independents and all the other parties in total are fielding 13 female candidates.

A total of 58 of the 90 constituencies do not have a single female candidate.

Another 22 constituencies have only one female candidate while seven constituencies can afford to watch two female contesting candidates.

Three female candidates are contesting a constituency in just two rare cases.

While the BJP and Congress have given tickets to only one female contestant each, who are both political newbies, NC has given mandate to a trio of women candidates including Sakina Masood (Itoo) and Shamima Firdaus, both of whom have experienced the turbulent storms of J&K politics, while only one is a newbie.

Similarly, among the two women contesting from the PDP, the party has fielded former legislator Asiea Naqash and Iltija Mufti, daughter of PDP President Mehbooba Mufti.

This is a classic case of elite capture rather than a commitment to gender parity as such.

A day after the Constitution (128th Amendment) Bill, to reserve 33 percent seats in the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies was cleared by both Houses of the Parliament, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that the bill presaged a new “democratic commitment” in India.

However, the BJP giving the mandate to only one woman among the 90 assembly seats in J&K illustrates that the commitment remains unfulfilled.

Leader of Opposition (LoP) in Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi in his message on the 40th anniversary of the All India Mahila Congress (AIMC) said, “In a system often stacked against women, each one of you must fight for and stake your rightful share of social, economic, and political power.”

The fact that Congress has given its mandates to just one woman in J&K suggests that even the Congress party’s system too is stacked against women.

Speaking with reporters in central Kashmir’s Budgam district in September 2023, NC Vice President and former chief minister Omar Abdullah said, “Fifty percent of our population is our sisters and mothers. They should get a chance to become representatives of the people.”

Abdullah said that NC had no scarcity of female leaders of calibre.

However, why then did it only give the mandate to so few women is perplexing.

PDP President Mehbooba Mufti had welcomed the union cabinet’s decision to approve the Women's Reservation Bill and termed it a great step.

“Having navigated the rough terrain of a predominantly male political landscape myself, I am happy to see that finally, the Women Reservation Bill will become a reality. We're grossly underrepresented given that we form half of the population. Great step,” Mufti posted on microblogging site X.

However, having given the mandate to just her daughter besides an ex-legislator, Mehbooba and her PDP too seem rather unwilling to give meaningful representation to women.

Former chief minister Ghulam Nabi Azad had also congratulated the government on passing the Women's Reservation Bill and said that it should have been passed 30 years back.

However, the fledgling party itself has not given mandate to even a single woman across J&K.

Apni Party leader Altaf Bukhari has been a vocal voice of 33 percent reservation for women in the J&K Legislative Assembly.

“Our party believes in real empowerment of women in J&K, and that dream will be realised when we have a considerable number of women lawmakers in our Legislative Assembly,” Bukhari said at a party function in Srinagar.

Why did his party then field only one female candidate across J&K?

For sure, in the corridors of power, perhaps the assurance of a 33 percent reservation for women may have come with more cheers and optimism.

However, the real question now is not so much if women can shatter the glass ceiling but whether the political establishment is ready to let them.