Heena Sharma Blog

A narrowing gender-gap in voter turnout illustrates the important role women, as a constituency, will play in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections . The 2014 Lok Sabha elections were a high point for female voter participation, with a historic narrowing of the gender-gap in voter turnout becoming evident. The male voter turnout at 67.09 per cent stood at just 1.79 percentage points above the female voter turnout at 65.30 per cent. This was the narrowest difference recorded between the two figures till date for general elections since 1967 (see table below). On International Women's Day 2019, it would be pertinent to look at data and statistics provided by the Election Commission of India for past general elections to see how women voters have fared and their increasing influence in Indian politics. Some key observations can be made from the above figures. In 2004, the difference between male and female voter turnout stood at 8.36 percentage points. In 2009, it stood at 4.4...

Delaying marriage by even one year could significantly reduce a young woman’s chances of being subjected to domestic violence in India, according to a new study. Over the decade to 2016, there has been a 20-percentage-point reduction in the number of girls married off before 18 years of age in India--from 47% in 2006 to 27% in 2016, as per Unicef. But this still leaves 1.5 million girls more vulnerable to domestic violence than those marrying later in life, concluded the study which was jointly conducted by the Indian Institute of Management, Indore and the Shiv Nadar University. Incidents of “less severe physical violence”--such as pushing, arm twisting, hair pulling or slapping--could fall from being inflicted on 25% of all women to 18% with just a one-year delay in marriage. More severe forms of physical violence--such as kicking, beating, choking, burning, threatening or attacking with a weapon--could decrease from 6% prevalence to 2%, the 2018 study found. Read Com...