Commentary
The message was clear: mixed results for Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, and India will see fewer women in parliament in the next term.
Ahead of International Women’s Day, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made an unusual campaign appearance ahead of the country’s big general election, addressing an all-women rally in the eastern state of West Bengal.
Modi said women voters were a shield against criticism of his decade-long rule, in line with his and his government’s efforts to target women, who make up 49 percent of India’s population.
From distributing cooking gas connections to advocating for greater safety for women, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has cast itself as the champion of Indian women’s interests under Modi’s government, but some of its policies have come under fire for being based more on hyperbolic claims than fact.
And ahead of India’s elections, several surveys suggest that, in contrast to the opposition parties, support for the BJP is stronger among women than among men.
But a week after India’s election results became clear, with the BJP falling short of a majority and relying on a coalition to form a government that was sworn in on Sunday, a complicated picture is emerging about how women will actually vote in 2024. The results also mark a break from a recent trend of more women being elected to parliament.
Al Jazeera analyses how the BJP managed to attract voters, how its women candidates performed, how women voted, and women’s representation in the new Indian Parliament.
What is the BJP’s biggest appeal to women?
- Access to LPG cylinders: In May 2016, Modi launched Scheme Ujjwala (meaning “bright” in Sanskrit) with the goal of providing every household with a cooking gas cylinder. Since then, the BJP has used multiple ad campaigns to portray him as a leader who has saved millions of women from having to rely on coal or wood for cooking. According to government data, gas cylinder coverage has risen from 55% in 2016 to 97% in 2020, but other data shows that many recipients are able to afford refills, raising doubts about the plan.
- maternity leave: In 2017, the Bharatiya Janata Party government pushed through legal changes to give women workers in the formal sector six months of paid maternity leave, double the previous amount. Critics point out that India’s workforce is dominated by the semi-formal and informal sectors, which offer far fewer protections for workers, especially women. Overall, India’s female labor force participation rate has fallen in recent years, and fewer women are looking for work.
- Women’s Safety: Women’s safety is a major concern in India, where nearly 90 rape cases are reported every day. India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, has long suffered from a reputation for being particularly violent. Under the state’s current Bharatiya Janata Party government and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Uttar Pradesh now has the highest conviction rate for crimes against women in India. But critics point out that the overall number of crimes against women in the state is also increasing year by year.
- Women’s Reservation Bill: The law, passed by Parliament in September 2023 after six failed attempts since its introduction in 1996, aims to ensure that women hold at least one-third, or 33 percent, of seats in India’s lower house and state assemblies. But it will not come into effect before 2029, but only after the census and subsequent delimitation. This delay, along with the procedural hurdles that must be overcome, “makes implementation uncertain,” Jagdeep Chauker, co-founder of the Association for Democratic Reforms, which works on electoral and political reforms, told Al Jazeera.
- Triple divorce prohibited: The Modi government claims to have liberated Indian Muslim women by banning the practice of triple talaq, which allows men the option of almost instant divorce by saying the word “talaq” three times. Critics point out that the ban fuels anti-Muslim stereotypes by portraying Muslim men as particularly regressive, even as the Modi government takes steps that seem to work against the interests of Muslim women. In 2022, the Modi government approved the early release of a man convicted of raping a Muslim woman, Bilquis Bano, during anti-Muslim riots in 2002 in Gujarat, where he was then chief minister. The Supreme Court overturned that decision in January 2024.
Did women voters flock to the BJP?
According to a post-poll survey by Lokniti, a research programme of the New Delhi-based Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, data suggested that the outreach did not resonate particularly well among women voters.
The party won by far the most seats and votes in parliament (240 seats, 37% of the vote).
However, among those figures, the percentage of male voters who chose the BJP was higher at 37% than female voters (36%) – roughly the same as the support the party received in 2019.
This contrasts with the figures for the main opposition party, the Indian National Congress: 22% of women voted for the party this year, up 2% from 2019, compared with 21% of men.
Chhokar said most women “see through” the politically motivated schemes being touted by the BJP.
“They see these programs as not real, they see them as just a way to get votes. They’ve seen it in action for years,” he said.
How many women will win from the BJP in the 2024 elections?
The Bharatiya Janata Party is also no better than its rivals at sending women to Parliament.
Indeed, in terms of overall seats, the BJP has more women MPs than any other party, and more men too: Of the 74 women elected to India’s lower house this year, 30 are from the BJP.
However, these 30 seats account for 12.5% of the BJP’s total 240 seats.
In contrast, women won 13.1% of seats in the Indian National Congress and 38% of seats in the All India Congress Party (AITC), which is part of the opposition coalition government aligned with the Indian National Congress.
In 2019, 41 of the BJP’s 303 seats were held by women, making the BJP 13.5% of its members in the last election. In 2019, the percentage of women in the BJP was 11.5% and the percentage of women in the Trinamool Party was 40.9%.
How has women’s performance in Indian elections fare over the years?
However, the low number of female legislators is not a phenomenon specific to political parties.
“All political parties only want women as voters, not as elected representatives,” Chalkar said. “Men in political parties do not want to share power with women.”
In 1951, 22 women were elected to Parliament, making up about 5% of the Indian lower house of parliament. This proportion has increased steadily, especially over the past three decades, reaching 14.3% in 2019.
However, the number of female members of parliament in 2024 will be 74, a slight decrease from the 78 women elected in the 2019 election.
