Women’s Participation in Indian Democracy through Pioneering Amendment: The Enabling Act That Reserves One-Third of Seats in the Indian Parliament

On 19 September 2023, the Indian Parliament introduced a bill in its lower house the Lok Sabha in the name of ‘Women’s Reservation Bill 2023. The bill was immediately passed by the Lok Sabha the next day on 20 September 2023. A day later, on 21 September, the bill was passed by Rajya Sabha, the upper house paving the reservation of one-third of seats for women in the Indian parliament. India has a history of providing women’s representation in local bodies. Since 1993, regional bodies like the Panchayats and Municipalities have been reserving one-third of seats for women as per the 73^rd and 74^th constitutional amendments. Indian Constitution also provides reservations for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in its Parliament as per their proportion to population. All these measures are intended to empower democratic institutions and the democratic structure of the country. However, providing women one-third of seats in the parliament is a pioneering step in the annals of modern democracy in the world. While doing so, India became the first such country to provide a fixed quota to its women population in the law-making body of the country.

When we see how other countries have been performing in providing women’s representation in their law-making institutions, the data through glaring results where no quota exists. Where there is no quota either in political parties or in parliament, the women's representation is abysmally low.

In this paper, three questions are analysed; firstly, whether there is a direct correlation between the democratic participation of women in law-making and reservation of seats around the world; secondly, whether Indian women were historically neglected from providing requisite representation in law-making; and finally, whether the new amendment is an instrument of democratic empowerment of women or an eye-wash where men will continue to dominate political institutions.