Narratives of Politics and Leadership

This chapter analyses whether narratives of politics and leadership that women members of Parliament employ and perform suggest that women’s precarious position within Parliament, party politics, and on the borders of the public and the private generate a vocabulary of service rather than leadership, which is seen as an appropriate characterisation of women’s public work. In order to study the subjectivation of women members of Parliament, the chapter analyses their subject narratives when they describe what they do, how others describe what they do, and how their roles are received by citizen audiences. In so doing, the chapter concludes that the subjectivation of women members of Parliament reflects, negotiates, and sometimes challenges gender relations that they encounter, perform, and sometimes defy.

Sustaining Participation

This chapter addresses the questions of why women stay on in politics and why they leave it. It examines the issue of sustainability of political participation—something that is rarely focused on in the studies in representative politics. It explores the party’s support of women’s parliamentary careers by examining the re-nomination and re-election of incumbent women members of Parliament over successive parliamentary terms. It shows that pressures of work, the conditions of work, the levels of political and the institutional support available to women members by political parties and Parliament, the pressures of expectation of constituencies, travel, and life–work balance all contribute to the sustainable participation of women in Parliament. It concludes that the sustainability of women’s participation in parliamentary politics is very largely affected by party, institutional, and leadership norms, and suggests that treating the Parliament as a place of work can open up avenues for gender-based reform.

Follow the Money

The chapter reflects upon the money–politics nexus in the Indian Parliament and parliamentary/electoral politics. It focuses attention on issues of corruption and on the effects of money on garnering resources for influence: election expenses, asset accumulation, and spending of MP Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS). The chapter assesses how money is seen and spent, on and by women MPs. The concern here is to examine how money plays a part in the gendered life of Parliament. While corruption in an important issue for accountability, the chapter shows how it is constructed in gendered ways. While women garner fewer monetary resources than men, they are not particularly less corrupt, or more sensitive to the demands of their constituencies. At the same time, public commentary on women’s role as members of Parliament is particularly harsh and intolerant of their shortcomings—perhaps because women are burdened with expectations of care in the way that male politicians are not.

Women Members of Parliament

This chapter explores women’s contribution to parliamentary debates—how women access participatory time to contribute to debates through party mechanisms, which concerns they are likely to prioritize (for example party, constituency, issue-based), the extent to which they participate, whether if at all they foreground their identity as women (or other aspects of identity), and the ways in which their contributions are received and interpreted (promoted, lauded, acknowledged, prevented, ignored, silenced, or delegitimized) by others form the substance of this chapter. We argue that we should be concerned about the consequences of reproducing a gendered division of labour where only women MPs, and not men, are tasked to represent ‘women’s issues’, or where women MPs are only tasked to represent ‘women’s issues’ and not other issues.

Introduction

In the Introduction we outline the major themes and arguments of the book and cover some theoretical debates on gender and representation. Evaluating how gender inequality runs through Parliament, its practices and norms, and its institutional frameworks and the forms that representation takes as a result are the areas on which we focus in our book. We note that the consistent under-representation of women in Parliament affects our reception of the performance of representation and the claims that the Indian Parliament makes to being the premier democratic institution of the country. The Introduction outlines the politics and performance framework that allow us to make an innovative and informed empirical analysis of continuities and changes in women’s participation in parliamentary politics. The framework focuses as much on rules and norms of the Parliament as on the corporeality and speech, stage and script of politics and political life that are witnessed in its practices. The Introduction then elucidates the main arguments and empirical focus of each chapter of the book.

The Parliamentary Committee for the Empowerment of Women

The chapter examines the working of the Committee for the Empowerment of Women as a politically gendered space and one which enables the substantive representation of women. It explores the gendered micro-politics of the only female-dominated committee in Parliament: the circumstances in which it was established, its functioning, how and why members are appointed, its subjects of investigation to date, the minority presence of male members on the committee, and the extent to which partisan politics has the potential to divide women member of Parliament on empowerment issues. It analyses the extent to which the committee is an effective body for linking women member of Parliament, the national machinery for women, and the women’s movement in India.

Pathways to Parliament

This chapter focuses on the different routes women political actors take to get to the Parliament. It outlines four such routes—kinship and family networks, social and political movements, the party system, and the struggle over quotas for women. Building on the methodological discussion of narrative structures, this chapter shows how through a close reading of the changes in the political environment of the country as well as of the life stories of women members of Parliament we can piece together the complex layers of negotiations that women make to be successful.

Contesting Elections

The chapter argues that although women’s representation has increased in numerical terms over the last 20 years, this increase has been marginal. It traces this argument through an analysis of the role of political parties as gatekeepers to parliamentary politics. Using both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, this chapter explores women’s participation as candidates in general elections for the Lok Sabha over the last two decades to understand the role that elections and the election process have on opportunities for women to enter Parliament. By analysing trends in the nomination of women by political parties and across states and regions it contests notions of incrementalism, which are often used to counter proposals for quotas, and which argue that women’s presence in elected bodies will increase over time.

Conclusion

The conclusion revisits the major theoretical themes of the book to suggest how the issue of women’s representation in the Indian Parliament is framed within the context of neoliberal development and the politics of recognition. It looks forward to outline some trends that are becoming visible in Indian parliamentary politics and suggest ways in which these might affect women’s participation. It argues that we need to see parliamentary politics for what it is—a limited but critically important gendered performance of politics, where women members play their roles through participating in its deliberations, law-making, ceremonies, and rituals. In so doing they reproduce dominant forms of gendered power relations while at the same time challenge them.

Representative Women?

Building on arguments about differences among women when discussing their representation, the chapter suggests that focusing on the link between descriptive and substantive representation depoliticizes analysis and leads to flawed policy outcomes. The chapter carefully outlines the social profiles of women in the Indian Parliament in terms of their caste, class, religion, and education. It also explores the development of an intersectionality of identities and their mobilization by both autonomous social and regional movements as well as by organized political parties to reflect upon the relationship between the movements and parties and the politics of representation that women members of Parliament mirror in their work in the Parliament.