Gender Equality in India will remain a pipe dream without woman's participation in politics.

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Gender Equality in India will remain a pipe dream without woman’s participation in politics

“The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world

But, in India let the truth be told

This hand is often sold

And the man is invariably in control”

Respected judges ladies and gentlemen,

Gender equality is the position of women in society in terms of rights and obligations in the sociological sense, and their role in relation to men. An added dimension could be the degree of  actual control women have over their lives and the extent to which they have access to the decision making process. I believe that although progress has been made towards achieving this goal Gender Equality in India will remain a distant dream. The main reason for this is that women continue to be grossly underrepresented in the political process

In the land of ‘Bharat Matha’ we are faced with the sad plight where our mothers and sisters are not allowed to be a part of the decision making process. But this was not always the case. References from various texts tell us that in the earlier vedic period women actively participated in ‘sabhas’ and ‘samithis’ thus very much being involved in the politics of that time. This is in contrary to the present world scenario where in India ranks 84th in terms of the number of world politicians.

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The recent India census 2001 statistics reveal that out of the more than 1 billion people living in India 48.27% are women. The sex ratio statistics show that there are 933 women per thousand males. Common sense will tell us that this situation should be favorable for women. However you will find that the highest number of women in the Lok Sabha at any point of time was 44(out of 542) after the elections of 1984. The numbers have been  declining ever since and political parties remain reluctant to field female candidates for election unless they are judges ...

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