Women's Reservation in India : A Critical Analysis of Its Role in Enhancing Female Political Representation

The role of women in a political representation is important towards an inclusive democracy and gender equality, but women are still underrepresented within the Indian legislatures. In this respect, the Women Reservation Bill suggests that women be given seats at the state and national levels. This paper focuses on the effects of such quotas by looking at their development over time and underlining how the 73 rd and the 74 th Amendment Act reinforced the work of the grassroots democracy and helped in the acceptance of such quotas. It evaluates the achievements and failures of these policies, citing the problems of tokenism, proxy representation and how various groups of women are interacting with intersectional issues. This paper discusses of the socio-cultural barriers involved, the party, and the electoral competition that comes in the way of women to explore the political field and evaluates whether the reservations can be an effective instrument of political empowerment or a mockery. To make the women in the Indian politics have something to say and to be in the frontline, the paper concludes that as much as the reservation of women has enhanced women in terms of numerical representation particularly the local level, it should be coupled with greater structural changes, political education and socioeconomic empowerment.