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@Bmat
Bhomik Mathur
@Bmat · 0:57

Women in Indian Politics | in Conversation with Akshi Chawla, independent researcher and editor

article image placeholderUploaded by @Bmat
To talk more about women's representation in Indian politics, I'm joined today by Ms. Akshi Chawla. She is an independent researcher and a writer based in New Delhi. Her work focuses on issues of representation and social justice from a gender lens. A large share of work is dedicated to tracking women's representation in politics. She also runs Women Lead, a one of its kind publication that brings the readers to most important updates about women political leaders from around the world
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@Bmat
Bhomik Mathur
@Bmat · 0:36
So, Akshi, welcome to Swell. So your work in the field of women representation in politics is very relevant in today's India, where women are increasingly claiming their due space in all professional fields, which also includes politics. So can you tell us something about the kind of work you do as an independent researcher and a writer? Also, we'd be interested to know, how did you start working in the field of gender representation and inclusion? Was there like any incident or something in your life?
@womenlead
Akshi #WomenLead
@womenlead · 5:00
So in social Sciences, humanities, you do have a lot of women. And suddenly I jump into this office where they're only men and I barely see any other woman. And it obviously troubled me and it also troubled me more because when we would go out to collect data, we would want the data of the population which had 50% women, but everybody was working with this woman. So I also thought that we're doing injustice to this whole process
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@Bmat
Bhomik Mathur
@Bmat · 0:23

Broad picture of women's representation in Indian politics?

Very interesting journey. So if you could tell us what is like a broad picture of the role women, women, women in Indian politics in there has been this talk of increasing women's representation in political parties for decades. But how much progress has really been made in India when it comes to gender inclusion in politics
@Bmat
Bhomik Mathur
@Bmat · 0:13

Link to Akshi's article: https://t.co/6P51fzzAVM

Also recently you wrote an article arguing that Congress Party's idea of giving tickets to more women candidates in Uttar Pradesh is an idea that must not fade away. So if you could elaborate a bit on that agreement as well
article image placeholderCongress’s idea of fielding more women candidates must not fade away
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@womenlead
Akshi #WomenLead
@womenlead · 4:59
Now, I think some of the best representation of women we have is at the local level, which is thanks to a law on constitutional amendment that we had around 293, which not just brought in governments for the local level, but also resolved, one thought, fees for women in these borders. So now, by law, in all your grandpa and child, your municipalities, a third of all those elected has to be women
@womenlead
Akshi #WomenLead
@womenlead · 2:17
And in India, getting a ticket to election is a very, very competitive process. Right. Even within men of the party, it's very competitive. People really have to work very hard, have a lot of resources, prove that they can win. So we don't see this part. We always see which party is winning, losing. But at the back end, within parties also, there's a lot of internal competition right now that competition is between men
@Bmat
Bhomik Mathur
@Bmat · 0:31

Are women candidates less winnable, as claimed by many political parties?

So coming to women reservation bill, which you talked about. One argument which I have consistently heard from political parties and especially male political leaders, is that they give tickets to candidates on the basis of winner. So what do you think about this argument? Is it just an excuse to prevent gender inclusion in their parties, or is it the fact that women candidates may be less viable in Indian politics, maybe due to patriarchy or something thing. What do you think about this argument
@womenlead
Akshi #WomenLead
@womenlead · 4:08
Second thing is that second thing is also we don't see and maybe some of us also do it ourselves as voters is many of us don't end up voting for individual candidates. Right. A lot of times we end up voting for either the party of our choice or if you want to work for the PJP, we'll just vote for the BJP, we want to work with the Congress, whatever
@Bmat
Bhomik Mathur
@Bmat · 0:30

Are women voters more empowered today?

Politics is not just about politicians, but also about voters. And recently, we have seen this argument that women voters are increasingly getting empowered, especially in the context of BJP political pundits have often argued that women form a or base of Prime Minister Modi's electorate. So how do you see this trend? Is it really happening? And do you think empowered women voters would also sort of encourage more women to actually join politics and contest elections? Th
@womenlead
Akshi #WomenLead
@womenlead · 4:42
That's a tricky question because we do see more women voting, but we have not yet seen a very mobile demand for more women to be contesting. Yes. If more women were to make up their minds and say, we will only vote for parties that have given tickets to women or we will only vote for women candidates. Now consequences. And obviously, that will be great there will be great pressure on political parties to be accountable and hence give more tickets
@womenlead
Akshi #WomenLead
@womenlead · 3:45
I think both men, women and people who are non binary, regardless of people's own gender, they should be able to demand from our political parties this very basic thing that people who are contesting elections and representing us should look like us. They shouldn't look like a group of men, mostly from a majority caste and religious groups. They should come from all fields of society so that we all feel representative
@Bmat
Bhomik Mathur
@Bmat · 0:34

Akshi's newsletter: https://t.co/tsiQfNYitK

It's very heartening and encouraging to hear that women today are making their own independent choices when it comes to voting for a leader in the election and not getting pressurized by their family members on who to vote would for. So I would also like to inform my listeners that Akshi has a newsletter called Women Lead. And I'll leave the link for that newsletter in the description. You must definitely check it out. So, Akshi, my final question to you would be, what is this news letter?
article image placeholder#WomenLead
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@womenlead
Akshi #WomenLead
@womenlead · 4:25
With that, I think I'll close this but if you have questions comments I'd be happy to come back to this later in the day and get back thank you so much for having me here and bigger thank you for having this conversation and I hope that these conversations continue on your platform. You speak to different people. I'm happy to share whatever I have but we must keep talking about this till we are able to fix this really bad gap in our politics. Thank you everyone for listening
@Bmat
Bhomik Mathur
@Bmat · 0:26

Thank you so much for coming to Swell. The floor is now open for audience questions

Thank you so, so much, Akshi, for coming to Swell and giving your time. As you said, this is a very important conversation to have. And I'm glad we could have you to talk about the representation of women in politics and how can we make Indian politics more gender inclusive. So thank you so much. Thank you so much for the work you are doing. And with this, I'm also opening up the floor for audience questions. Thanks
@Karan.Dev
Karan Dev
@Karan.Dev · 0:19

@womenlead

Hey Akshi, thank you for this fascinating interviews. Amas know, apart from reservations, I was wondering what you thought governments can do to enhance representation of women in politics. So what are some of the policies that you think that they could employ to help with this process
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@Wordsmith
Sreeja V
@Wordsmith · 0:11
Hi, Akshi. I'd like to ask you, who are some of the women politics that you look up to as inspiration in India and the world
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@Ramya
Ramya V
@Ramya · 0:25
Thank you for a great conversation. Very interesting. Love tuning into it. And I had a question to ask a few. So a lot of countries around the world have taken measures to increase the number of women politicians. How have such measures benefited these countries? And I would love to know your thoughts on this
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@womenlead
Akshi #WomenLead
@womenlead · 5:00
So I think that's the thing that the government can do is just to create the enabling conditions and in general, I think our government can just make sure that our school education our public culture allows for women to be more actively participating in public life. So Indian has such poor shares of women working in the formal sector we have one of the lowest labor force participation rates for women and in general, women's role is so strictly defined to be within the household and politics is just an extension of that
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@womenlead
Akshi #WomenLead
@womenlead · 1:16
Yeah. No sexism. Making sure elected. You know, ministers are sensitized. You know, there's MP Mr. Shashi Tharoo went to Parliament last session and took a picture of himself a selfie with a few women, few of his women colleagues, and capturing it that Parliament is such a beautiful place to work. What do you mean? Women are just bringing in an element of beauty or what this kind of thing that men need to be sensitized that you cannot talk like this
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@womenlead
Akshi #WomenLead
@womenlead · 4:55
So I think I like the way she speaks and how she uses her politics in Parliament to raise issues with horse that you cannot ignore. Right. You can't just, like, not listen from. I really loved what the late Fish Mason had done with Twitter to help citizens related to issues of, related to their passports or diplomacy kind of issues. I think that was very wonderful way that she reimagined the Twitter space to provide instant help
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@womenlead
Akshi #WomenLead
@womenlead · 0:43
Yeah, I was seeing a former job and Chancellor Angela Merkel was also someone, you know, it was nice to have her all this time and now she's not there. So you feel like there's a gap at the level of global leadership. But yeah, these are some of the I'm just saying from the top of my mind, by no means to say that they're not other women. And obviously, we have this memory sometimes just cherrypicks select names
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@womenlead
Akshi #WomenLead
@womenlead · 4:12
So this is a very important thing that happens when you see more women in quality and lastly is the point and this is something I feel very strongly about, is that I'm as I was saying, whenever we talk about women in politics, we start asking a lot of these questions about what kind of benefits does it lead to
@womenlead
Akshi #WomenLead
@womenlead · 3:07
And I don't mean that the question wasn't right and it's not about you, but I just feel that this question has come up so many times that it's also important to emphasize this point. But yes, there has been enough evidence to show that overall getting more women in politics is beneficial in many ways, from government to overall the way what examples is of our children to the world health of democracy. Thanks once again, Fort
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