Shirin Rai on Gender Parity in the Indian Parliament

<p>The 17th Lok Sabha has seventy-eight women MPs, the highest since independence. Has the increase in women’s participation been meaningful? What narratives of equality and citizenship have framed the issue of electoral representation? Do women MPs carry the burden of shifting welfare policy in a gender-sensitive direction? </p><p>In this episode of Interpreting India, <a href="https://www.soas.ac.uk/about/shirin-rai">Shirin Rai</a> joins <a href="https://carnegieindia.org/experts/1944">Shibani Mehta</a> to discuss these questions on gender parity and disparity in the Indian Parliament.</p><p><strong>Episode Contributors</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.soas.ac.uk/about/shirin-rai">Shirin Rai</a> is an interdisciplinary scholar of international relations, area studies, political economy, history, and comparative politics. She has written extensively on issues of gender, governance and development, and gender and political institutions. Her work within feminist political economy examines gendered regimes of work and survival under globalization, which include the privatization of natural resources and the changing nature of work. </p><p>Professor Rai is a distinguished research professor of politics and international relations at SOAS, University of London. She is a fellow of the British Academy. In 2022, she was awarded the Distinguished Contribution Prize by the British International Studies Association for her contribution to the promotion of excellence in the discipline of international studies over a substantial period of time. </p><p><a href="https://carnegieindia.org/experts/1944">Shibani Mehta</a> is a senior research analyst with the Security Studies Program at Carnegie India. Her research focuses on the India-China boundary dispute with the purpose of analyzing India’s foreign and security policy decisionmaking.</p><p>--</p><p><strong>Additional Reading</strong></p><p><a href="https://prsindia.org/parliamenttrack/vital-stats/70-years-of-parliament">70 Years of Parliament</a> by PRS Legislative Resear