An Inclusive Women’s Group That’s Encouraging Female Participation In India’s Governance

Following a successful pilot run in Goa earlier this year, the India Women’s Caucus (IWC) is set to convene in Bengaluru on Saturday, December 8, for a day-long conference. A meeting of non-partisan women of various professions and backgrounds, the event seeks to push for a more gender-just political system, encouraging more women representations as elected MPs and MLAs.

IWC Bengaluru is being convened by Tara Krishnaswamy, Co-founder of Citizens for Bengaluru, author and activist, and Rajeshree Nagarsekar, publisher and journalist. With 22 speakers, the day’s event is broken up into 5 panels which will address the 5 ways in which we analyse the current political place of women in India – including understanding women’s current position, questioning why there are such few women MPs and MLAs, the need for minority representation and intersectional progress.

The inclusive event looks to push for better representation of women from the grassroots upwards, involving people from various fields and walks of life to increase participation in politics. They seek to push for more party tickets to be given to women in elections across governing bodies, and the event will come to a close with the formulation of such an action plan for the same as well as planning for the future of IWC for 2019 and beyond.

“The meeting of the India Women’s Caucus is part of a larger sustained campaign we intend to begin. It is unfortunate that women who have had great success as corporators and panchayat leaders are unable to grow as the parties deny tickets for them. We need to work with political parties and women candidates too. A resolution on the next steps towards the General Election of 2019 will be formulated through the event and released to the media at the close of the day,” said Ms Krishnaswamy while addressing the media at the Bangalore Press Club.

The event is taking place at Chalukya Hotel, Bengaluru, from 10 AM to 7 PM. You can find more details here.