Why are 65 million Indian women missing from the electorate?

65 million women — around 20% of eligible female voters — are missing from India’s electorate, raising a question on how well their concerns are represented in democracy. According to Brookings Institute, here are the reasons for it.

1. True political representation of women cannot be ensured unless preferences of women get significant attention. The adverse sex ratio of the Indian electorate makes it impossible for women’s welfare to feature in political agendas and policymaking.

2.This number of 65 million missing women has increased fourfold from 15 million (13% of the electorate) to 65 million (20% of the electorate) in the last 50 years

Also Read: Interview with Shamika Ravi, Brookings Institute

3. Sex ratio has worsened in large states like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Maharashtra. This implies that fewer women voice their opinion through elections.

4. The sex ratio of the electorate is far worse than the general sex ratio of the population. This implies that women who are eligible voters are actually not registered in electoral rolls and remain “missing from the voters lists”.

5. Even when politicians are not biased against women, their policies might be.

6. True political representation of women cannot be ensured unless preferences of women get significant attention.

7.The authors, Ravi Kapoor and Shamika Ravi suggest that policymakers should target constituencies with the worst gender ratios to be reserved for women. Women's reservation bill may not be the answer according to the authors.

8. In conclusion, the Brookings Institution report says to fix the issue of missing women in the electorate will require innovative policy interventions from the government, but to a much larger extent this requires the Indian society to value its women.

Brookings Institute blog on the issue raises some pertinent questions as it opens the mind of the reader to think about these. Are policies truly representative of the will of the women of this country, or are they in fact artificially skewed against them? If women are grossly under-represented in the Indian electorate, can policies enacted based on election outcomes be representative of their policy preferences?