Wooing the Woman Voter: Why Political Parties Want Women on Their Side

Why is it crucial for political parties to appease women voters?

Subsidies, financial assistance, reservations in jobs and... smartphones. It's raining sops for women voters with political parties across the spectrum rushing to have them on their side.

To break it down:

• On 29 August, the Narendra Modi government announced a subsidy of Rs 200 per LPG cylinder.

• A day later, the Congress government in Karnataka, as promised in their pre-poll manifesto, launched the 'Gruha Lakshmi scheme', where women heads of households are given a monthly financial assistance of Rs 2,000.

• In poll-bound Madhya Pradesh, the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government raised the monthly financial aid given to women under the Ladli Behna scheme from Rs 1,000 to Rs 1,250.

• His Rajasthan counterpart and Congress leader Ashok Gehlot on 10 August announced free smartphones for at least 40 lakh women under the Indira Gandhi Smartphone scheme.

As the Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, and Mizoram inch closer, The Quint explores why political parties are going all out to make women voters smile.

The Growing Number of Women Voters

According to the Election Commission of India (ECI), data from the Assembly election in 1962 from a then undivided Madhya Pradesh (including Chhattisgarh), showed that only 29.07 percent of women chose to vote. It took over three decades for the turnout figure of women voters to cross 50 percent. This happened in 1998, two years before the state was split.

While 65.91 percent of women turned up to cast their votes in 2008, in the 2018 Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, a record 74 percent of registered women voters showed up at the polling booth.

In the 2018 Assembly elections in Rajasthan, women outshined their male counterparts by recording a 74.66 percent voter turnout. It was higher than the state's overall voting percentage of 74.21 percent. In Banswara, a tribal district in the state, a whopping 83.46 percent of women turned up to vote.

Down south in Telangana, at least 3.5 lakh new women voters have been enrolled ahead of the Assembly elections. Of the state's nearly 3 crore voters, 1,50,48,250 are men and 1,49,24,718 are women.

Speaking to The Quint in 2022, psephologist and co-director of Lokniti Sanjay Kumar had said that women outnumber men in terms of voting percentage in at least 15-16 states.

"Realising that there is an increasing interest of women in politics, political parties have started focusing on women voters because they are in a sizeable number. This is not a community that constitutes 8, 10, or 12 percent of the total voters. Women constitute half of the total voters now."

Women Voters No Longer Silent

Women are not only coming out to vote in large numbers, but they are also no longer silent about it. As more and more women exercise their franchise, they are also becoming the king/queenmakers in almost every election. To put it simply, if women vote for a party as a block, the party or alliance wins the said elections, Kumar said.

This was most recently seen in the Karnataka Assembly elections when the Congress party clinched a staggering victory. The party won 136 seats out of 224, with a vote share of 43 percent – with women contributing to the party's win in a big way. How?

They polled more than men in at least 52 constituencies of the state – across regions of South, Coastal, Central Karnataka, and the Bengaluru-Urban region. The Congress won 28 of these seats. While the BJP bagged 14, the JD(S) won just 9 of them.

Data from Axis My India and Lokniti-CSDS post-poll survey of four Assembly elections – Uttar Pradesh, Goa, Manipur, and Uttarakhand – showed women voted for the BJP more than men in all four states where the party won.

If women vote as a block, they could be deciding factors in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, and Telangana, and Mizoram.

Women Don't Really Vote for Safety & Security

In his 2022 interview, Kumar said that safety and security might not be the primary issue for a large number of women living in villages, contrary to perception.

"This is a concern only among upper-class and middle-class women. It is not a big concern among the lower class and poorer women. But yes, when it comes to unemployment, when it comes to price rises, we noticed that there is some differential pattern. Unemployment, price rise, the day-to-day necessities – for these, the concern among women is much higher."

Sanjay Kumar to The Quint

In the 2021 Assembly polls, this was witnessed when women voted in large numbers for Mamata Banerjee. Banerjee's government implemented over 200 women-centric schemes, with 'Kanyashree' and 'Rupashree' – which grants funds for both marriage and education – being the most popular. Her government also started the 'Sabooj Sathi' scheme – which provides bicycles for female students and also gives them access to education loans.

In return, a majority of Bengal's 3.7 crore women voters – constituting 49 percent of the electorate – chose Didi.

Speaking to The Quint after the Karnataka elections, Tara Krishnaswamy, political commentator and co-founder of Political Shakti, had said that women "tend to vote differently when they feel strongly about something – and they link that to delivery, not manifesto promises, election rhetoric, rallies, roadshows, or the size of the audience."

She added that the question that women voters often ask is: "Am I getting more out of this government for the things I feel strongly about?"

"Women care about law and order. They care about food, and hunger; they care about price rise, and jobs – because all of these things affect them disproportionately. When there is a law and order issue, political instability, or social instability, women are the first to get hurt. The same goes for jobs – women lose their jobs first," she had said.

For Women, They're Not Sops, but Welfare Schemes

For women, 'freebies' or 'sops' are more than just that. It is a means of empowerment, more financial security, a job, or relief from price rise. If political parties think smartly, they could not only capitalise on the women vote, but also make sure that the state/country benefits from it, say experts.

For example, when the Shakti scheme – in which women of Karnataka domicile can avail free bus rides across the state – was implemented earlier this year, it earned praise as well as brickbats. While the critics saw it as a freebie, for women, it meant more mobility.

"Only 19 percent of women are currently in the workforce, out of which over 92 percent of women are in the informal sector, getting the bare minimum for the survival of their household. They have to walk for miles to get their daily survival needs. So, naturally, they benefit from free transport," said Vibhuti Patel, an economist.

"Instead of focusing on the unjust and exploitative systems perpetrated by the macroeconomic policies that accentuate socio-economic inequalities, which result in the social exclusion of women from human development, we are categorising a social inclusive measure such as free transport as a 'freebie'," she added.

For women benefitting from the Indira Gandhi Smartphone scheme, it could be a means to education or an employment opportunity – or it could simply mean calling someone without depending on anyone else.

But there's also an opinion that direct transfers or freebies could do only so much. Speaking to The Quint previously, political analyst Kanwardeep Singh Dharowali said that the focus should also be to create opportunities for jobs lost due to agrarian crisis.

"Women who were employed majorly in agriculture have become unemployed because of the agrarian crisis. It has become more capital intensive, leading to unemployment for women. Bring in the IT sector, corporate sector, create more jobs instead of handing out lollipops."

Economists like Akshi Chawla, who is the associate editor at Centre for Economic Data and Analysis at Ashoka University, point that simply creating opportunities is not enough, but what's crucial is to make these accessible to women.

"We also need to ensure that women are able to stay employed and that they don't drop out due to various push and pull factors. We need supportive policies and infrastructure at the workplace, and also at the community level (such as childcare support and safe public transport facilities that can help them commute without the fear of violence and harassment)," she explains.

(With inputs from Meenakshy Sasikumar.)