In March, Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), a global organisation of national parliaments, had said just over one in four lawmakers worldwide are women and the progress towards gender equality is “painfully slow”. A similar situation is there in Karnataka, which is going for polls on May 10.
The south Indian state has 2,429 male candidates contesting on the 224 seats against 185 women – for every female candidate there are 13 men in the fray, the data shows. Women candidates are not even 10% of the total candidates who are contesting the polls, according to the data accessed by News18 from the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), Karnataka.
But this scenario in the state is not new. In the 2013 assembly polls, there were 2,948 candidates in the fray, out of which, just 175 were women. In 2018, there were 2,636 candidates in the fray and 219 were females.
When it comes to the electoral roll, the picture is not as drastic. According to the state’s latest electoral data, in at least 112 seats, there are more women voters than men. This margin is lowest in Gubbi, where women voters outnumbered men by 109 and highest in Mangalore City South where 10,747 more women are in the list when compared to the men voters. Mangalore City South has 1,17,475 male voters while the women in the electoral list stood at 1,28,222.
In the overall numbers also, women representation in the electoral roll is almost half. Out of the state’s 5.30 crore voters, 2.63 crore are females while 2.66 crore are men.
There are as many as nine seats where the female voters have outnumbered men by a margin of over 7,000. These included Narasimharaja (8,673); Kundapur (8,033); Kaup (7,913); Karkala (7,707); Mangalore City North (7,514); Udupi (7,361); Channapatna (7,257) and Bellary City (7,020).
There are two sets of opinions on why women have outnumbered men in the voter list. News18 spoke to few of the poll officials. One set of them said it is the initiatives of the ECI that ensured that each and every women is part of the list and are coming forward to vote.
While another set of officials said the number of females is higher as men tend to migrate in search of work and only women are left behind.
Parties Fielded Fewer Women Candidates
Even though the state has almost equal representation of women in the electoral roll, political parties have failed to utilise this other half population while releasing the list. The BJP, Congress and JDS are the three main parties that are contesting the Karnataka assembly polls.
As far as the female representation goes, the JDS has fielded 13 women while the BJP has named 12. The Congress has released the candidate lists with just 11 females.
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