Women seen as voters, not candidates; West Bengal most hospitable, Karnataka worst

Roughly half of all voters are now women. Yet, when it comes to candidates and MPs, women are only a very small part of the picture. In 1962 - the year from when continuous gender data is available for voters, candidates and MPs - 42% of the voters were women. By 2019, this had increased to 48.2% - almost equal to their share of population. But when it comes to candidates, only 9% were women. The count of MPs, though, was a little better at 14.4%.

Surprisingly, Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has been very stingy in fielding women candidates - in 2019, only 6.3% of the party's candidates were women.

Both Congress and BJP fielded roughly the same proportion of women candidates at 12.8% and 12.6%, respectively in 2019.



Karnataka, along with Kerala, stands out as the worst state for aspiring women politicians, with only about 5 out of every 100 women candidates winning their elections on average between 1996 and 2019.

In stark contrast, West Bengal emerged as the most hospitable state for women, with a winning rate of 20 out of 100 women candidates.

Gujarat emerged as the second-best state for women candidates, with 18 out of 100 winning, followed by Rajasthan (12%).

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