20-11-2012, 06:29 PM
A Case Study of Women's Political Participation in Maharashtra
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Introduction
Women comprise roughly about half of the world's population.
According to Population Reference Bureau, 2004, (World Population
Data Sheet, The United Nations) out of 3209 millions women
living in the world, the share of India is 531.9 million. This amounts
to nearly half of India's total population. As per 2001 Census, the
ratio of females per thousand males is 933. Nearly seventy percent
of the women are living below the poverty line and two-thirds of
them are illiterate. According to the UNDP's Human Development
Report 1995, "Poverty has a woman's face; of the 1.3 billion people
in poverty, 70 per cent are women".
Women constituting half of the population of our country have
been an integral part of our social structure principally due to their
contribution to the socio-economic spheres of life, notwithstanding
the fact that women in India have been discriminated because of
gender bias prevalent in the patriarchic values of the Indian society.
The dominant patriarchy has denied women equality of status and
opportunities in socio-economic and political spheres. Amidst such
patriarchic bias, women in India can not be treated as a homogeneous
unit in view of the differences based in terms of class, caste,
status, space (rural-urban divide) etc. Several studies have shown
that the social, economic and political empowerment of Indian rural
women is comparatively much lower than that of their urban counterparts.
Rural Indian women have still been treated as "Object" of
development rather than the "Subject" of development.
A Historical Background
The history of Indian women's participation in politics could
be traced back to the reform movements of the nineteenth century,
which emerged as a result of the conflicts between the Indian
nationalists and the Colonial power. This class made attempts
to reform the Indian society through campaigns against the caste
system, polytheism, idol worship, animism, purdah, child marriage,
and sati etc., Raja Ram Mohan Roy focused his efforts on
women's education and abolition of sati. In the early 1850s, a
campaign by Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar resulted in the passage
of the Widow Remarriage Act, 1856. Several eminent women
reformers participated in these movements both on an all-India
basis and from the Maharashtra region with the help of organizations
like the Arya Samaj, Brahmo Samaj, Prathana Samaj etc.
Pandita Ramabai Saraswati, Ramabai Ranade, and Serennai
Cursetji established the Bharata Mahila Parishad, Arya Mahila
Samaj, and Stri Zarthosti Mandal for philanthropic and charitable
work for the upliftment and enlightenment of women. Begum
Shah Nawaz's mother, Amir-un-Nisa, became a Founder-member
of Anjuman-e-Khawatin-e-Islam in Punjab. However, Sarala
Devi Chaudhurani started the first independent women's organization,
the Bharat Stree Mahamandal, which had its first meeting
in Allahabad in 1910. The Bharat Stree Mahamandal planned to
open branches in all parts of India to promote female education.
It established branches in Lahore, Allahabad, Delhi, Karachi,
Amritsar, Hyderabad, Kanpur, Bankura, Hazaribagh, Midnapur
and Kolkata to bring together women, irrespective of their caste,
creed, class and party affiliation, on the basis of their common
interest in the moral and material progress of the women in India.