New Delhi: There was approximately a 1513.33% increase in the number of women candidates contesting the Lok Sabha election from 1957 to 2019. In 1957, there were just 45 women candidates contesting the Lok Sabha election. By 2019, this figure had risen to 726, according to Election Commission data.
This is the scenario even as the percentage of women in parliament has increased from 4.5% in 1957 to 14.4% in 2019.
On the other hand, there was approximately a 396.55% increase in the number of male candidates contesting the Lok Sabha election from 1957 to 2019. The number of male candidates has grown from 1,474 in 1957 to 7,322 in 2019.
This means that the number of men contesting has multiplied by five times. For women, the growth has been 16-fold.
However, the number of women candidates has never yet crossed 1,000.
Such data provides insights into how elections have offered opportunities for women to enter Parliament.
Gender-wise data is not available for the first general election in 1952, the daily added.
This data also refocusses attention on the Women’s Reservation Bill 2023 that proposes a 33% reservation for women in Lok Sabha and assemblies of State and National Capital Territory of Delhi, for 15 years. The Bill was passed 27 years after it was first introduced in parliament.
However, to get 33% women MPs and MLAs, enough number of women need to contest the elections. But is that the case?
Data from the Election Commission shows that in the 2019 general elections, only 726 out of the 8,054 candidates were women, reported the Hindu. That means only 9% of the tickets were given to women.
Close to a third of these women weren’t backed by any political party, it added.
In 2014, the number of women candidates was just 668 among the total 8,251 candidates, it said.
Also read: How Women Candidates Fared in the 2019 Elections
A similar trend
In the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the situation doesn’t seem to be any different.
Take for instance, in Uttar Pradesh’s first phase of the polls, only seven women will be contesting out of the 80 candidates in the fray, PTI reported, citing official data.
The figure is lower than the first phase of the 2019 general elections, during which 12 out of the 91 contenders were women. However, none of these female candidates emerged victorious, it noted.
Interestingly, it’s evident how political parties prioritise women candidates with political influence.
For instance, in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, of the 417 parliamentary seats for the BJP, only 68, or 16%, are women, the Print reported.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha election in Maharashtra, eight women candidates emerged victorious. These women MPs, including Supriya Sule, Sharad Pawar’s daughter, predominantly hail from influential political families, Free Press Journal reported.
According to ECI data, in the 1957 election, 22 out of 45 women candidates won, showing a 48.88% success rate. However, this rate has consistently decreased over time. In 2019, only 78 out of 726 women candidates won, resulting in a success rate of just 10.74%.
Similarly, for male candidates, their winning percentage dropped from 31.7% in 1957 to only 6.4% in 2019.
Experts told the Hindu that this simply reflects the fact that the number of candidates of both sexes has grown even as the number of seats in the Lok Sabha remained the same.
