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Shaping of the Woman Constituency in Indian Elections: Evidence from the NES Data

Document Cited in Related
Published date01 December 2024
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1177/23210230241293562
AuthorRajeshwari Deshpande
Date01 December 2024
Shaping of the Woman
Constituency in Indian Elections:
Evidence from the NES Data
Rajeshwari Deshpande1
Abstract
This article studies the patterns of women’s vote in the Lok Sabha elections in India in 2024. It draws
upon the National Election Studies (NES) data of 2024 and of previous years to address three key
questions related to women’s vote in Indian elections. The first is about the extent of Indian women’s
political participation in the wake of increased turnout of women voters and the closing of the gender
gap. The second question is about the extent of women’s support to the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) as
their favoured party. In the absence of conclusive evidence on gender-wise patterns of vote, there have
been several tentative and speculative analyses regarding the increasing support of women voters to
the BJP both at the regional and national elections, especially since 2014. The article uses the unique
window of the NES data sets to understand and decipher women’s support for the BJP and other politi-
cal parties on a timeline. Finally, from within the confines of the empirical evidence provided by the
NES data sets, it also tries to address a rather nuanced question of the arrival of women’s agency in the
electoral democracy in India. With the help of the NES data sets, it tries to understand whether women
vote mainly as women, prioritizing their gendered identities over other kinds of identities, and whether
their voting patterns indicate the arrival of an autonomous women’s constituency in Indian democracy.
Keywords
Women’s vote, 2024 Lok Sabha elections, gender gap, BJP vote
Introduction
After a long lull of many years, the discussion on women’s empowerment in Indian politics was revived
during the Lok Sabha (LS) elections of 2019. It was revived in the wake of the gradual increase in the
women’s turnout in the state assembly elections over the past few years and the closing of the gender gap
in turnout. Although slogans like ‘Beti Bachao Beti Padhao’ remained blemished by the growing social
Original Article
Studies in Indian Politics
12(2) 303–317, 2024
© 2024 Lokniti, Centre for the
Study of Developing Societies
Article reuse guidelines:
in.sagepub.com/journals-permissions-india
DOI: 10.1177/23210230241293562
journals.sagepub.com/home/inp
1 Department of Political Science, Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune, Maharashtra, India
Corresponding author:
Rajeshwari Deshpande, Department of Political Science, Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune, Maharashtra
411037, India.
E-mail: rajeshwari.deshpande@gmail.com

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