Elections

Women’s issues may be high on the agenda for political parties vying for votes in India’s mammoth general election, but few female lawmakers will get an opportunity to implement the policies being proposed.

Less than a fifth of the candidates standing for the front-running main opposition group, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), or the ruling Congress, are women, according to an analysis.

In the current parliament, women hold only 11% of seats in both houses, less than Pakistan at 21% and Afghanistan at 28%, research by the Inter-Parliamentary Union group shows.

ANC Women's League President, Angie Motshekga, has called on young people not to heed calls to boycott upcoming elections. She was speaking at a Freedom Day rally organised by the Young Communist League (YCL) and other alliance partners in Mfuleni on the Cape Flats.

There is an Ethel, a Melanie, a Dana, a Jolie, a Melody, a Nancy, a Judith, and a Margaret who would prefer voters call her Peggy.

Women are all over Lake and Porter county ballots this spring.

Some 51 Democrats and 45 Republicans are competing with men and sometimes other women for the state legislature, county, township and municipal offices May 6.

They represent almost a third of all candidates for public elective offices. More than 25 of them are incumbent officials running for re-election.

With 59 winners of the total 556 contestants, women candidates seem to have had a dream run in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. May 16 will tell if their success story repeats this time too.

Women not only outnumber men on electoral rolls in the state, they also outscored them in casting votes. The Election Commission on Saturday said 2.03 crore women — 73.86% of the total women voters — cast their votes in the Lok Sabha elections held on Thursday. In comparison, 2.02 crore men (73.51%) turned up at polling booths. But of 3,341 transgenders, only 419 (12.5%) voted.

The Gender Section of the National Elections Commission (NEC) has begun the conduct of a string of regional Gender Seminars to encourage Women's Political participation in the ensuing Special Senatorial Election.

The first phase of the seminar was held in Buchanan, Grand Bassa County on April 21 and 22 and brought together participants from Grand Bassa, Margibi, Montserrado and Rivercess Counties. The next phase of the seminar will be held on April 24 and 25 in Robertsport, Grand Cape Mount County and would draw participants from Bomi, Cape Mount and Gbapolu Counties.

In late March, Raveela Gangula rallied a dozen women to stop a drunken man from savagely beating his wife in Muthangi, a village in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Although they restrained him and called the police, he was released that evening without charges.

“The police should have locked him up for at least a week and scared him from ever touching another woman like that again,” Gangula said. “The government does not support us.”