The bill would amend the Constitution to reserve one-third of seats in Parliament and in state assemblies for women. Despite sometimes chaotic proceedings in the upper house, the final vote was nearly unanimous, with 191 votes for and one against. When it passed, Brinda Karat, a member from the Communist Party of India and a longtime campaigner for women’s rights, spoke for many when she said: “The bill will change the culture of the country, because women today are still caught in a cultural prison. We have to fight stereotypes every day.”
...
As 2012 begins, even the bill’s most ardent supporters acknowledge that India’s female members of Parliament have a battle on their hands. But some took heart from a statement made by the president of the Indian National Congress party, Sonia Gandhi, the widow of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.
As the winter session of Parliament drew to a close with parties debating a proposal, which ultimately failed, to set up an anti-corruption ombudsman, Mrs. Gandhi mentioned the Women’s Reservation Bill and pledged to fight for its eventual passage in the lower house.
The first female president of the Indian National Congress party, the poet-politician Sarojini Naidu, would have approved. As a young leader of India’s independence movement, Ms. Naidu was among a score of women who campaigned for the right to vote. It took them from 1917, when the Indian National Congress party backed women’s sufferage, to 1926, when women could vote and run for some state legislatures, to see the first changes, and then several more years before all women in India had the right to cast ballots.
Read more
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/04/world/asia/04iht-letter04.html?src=recg&pagewanted=all
No comments:
Post a Comment