Laying the Path For Gender Equality In Politics

Thirty years ago, inspired by Gandhian principals and the dream of a truly democratic society, six social scientists from Jawaharlal Nehru University came together to establish the Centre for Social Research (CSR) in Delhi. Over the last three decades CSR has been a leader in the Indian women’s movement due to its unique work in the three areas of being a facilitator of grassroots programmes and trainings, of being an esteemed research institute and of being a lobbyist, advocate and advisor to government institutions on the issue of women’s empowerment.

CSR has tackled a number of issues related to gender inequality, women empowerment and underprivileged through their deep research, action oriented work. Some of their most successful projects and advances have been establishing the Gender Training Institute in ’97 that strives to facilitate the empowerment of women, the Meri Shakti, Meri Beti project to reduce pre-natal sex selection, managing a number of Crisis Intervention Centers that were founded to end violence against women at the grass root level… and the list goes on.

Two of their most unique program are what is probably is a starting point to meet the need of the hour, higher involvement of women in the political process and in office.

The first project, Enhancing the Role of Women in Strengthening Democracy commenced in 2008 with support from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). It was built to encourage the capacity of marginalized women to participate in state and national electoral politics. To reduce the gender deficit a pipeline of 1000 women leaders who were motivated to contest elections for state legislatures and national parliament were selected and trained. Political parties were lobbied to increase seats for women within and finally the capacity of women across India to contest elections was enhanced as political parties were made aware about this pool of trained women.

The second, launched in 2012, in collaboration with Centre for Public Policy, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIMB) the India-Women in Leadership i-WIL programme is designed to strengthen the capabilities and effectiveness of women leaders as they enter and progress in Indian democracy. It equips aspiring women leaders with the requisite skills, knowledge and expertise in the various aspects of governance.

The timing of the i-WIL programme is flawless, partly because of the issue of the Women’s Reservation Bill that seeks reserving 33% of seats in state legislatures and parliament for women. The hope is that the i-WIL will help all women in politics, regardless of caste, class, region or political party- to become more active and more effective political leaders.

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