Manipur Election 2022: Issues Of Women Representation And Parti-Cipation

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Dr. Nameirakpam Bijen Meetei , Ngasepam Cinthoibi Chanu

Abstract

Most of the political parties in India use issues of women empowerment as their electoral planks to mobilize women voters. Not only that, all landmark international agreements contain provision or guidelines to take steps to achieve gender equality. Yet in reality women are under-represented in the decision-making bodies. By employing observation, explorative methods with secondary sources the present paper aims to study the issues of political representation and participation of women in Manipur. Women in Manipur are generally assumed to be empowered based on the resistance narrative history of the state. This paper seeks to give an insight into how Manipuri women participate and represent in the recently held 12th Manipur Legislative Assembly election 2022. It argues that a number of women are actively engaged as voters, campaigners, party members or what can be considered as foot soldiers. Though, the recent assembly elections witnessed higher representation of women and the number of elected women representatives increased to five, their representative is still low and marginal. It further argues that one of the reasons for such marginal representation of women in the state assembly is the patriarchal structure of the society where dominance of men over women has been the norm, and thus most of the parties are reluctant to suggest women candidates.

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