How Did Women Vote in Lok sabha elections 2009

Abstract

Rajeshwari Deshpande (fajeshwari.deshpande@ gmail.com) is with the Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Pune. The National Election Study (nes) 2009 series provides a unique win dow to understand the nature of Indian women's participation in elections during the last two decades by helping us analyse their voting patterns over five Lok Sabha polls. The data have so far yielded three important observations. The first about a participatory upsurge among women, along with other marginalised groups, in the 1990s (Yadav 2000), and the second about a definite bias towards the Congress among women voters (Yadav 2003). The third, which emerged mainly from the 2004 Lok Sabha election data when we examined some assumptions about women's votes and their politics (Deshpande 2004), pointed to the possi bility that gender as an explanatory factor could not be seen in isolation. It suggested that at times caste and class may override gender in deciding the way women vote and that gender operates along with other dimensions of social hierarchy in influenc ing women's voting behaviour. Taking a cue from these findings, the present study tries to understand the nature of the wom en's vote in the 2009 Lok Sabha election and check to what extent gender explains the election outcome. The turnout of men and women voters showed a difference of around 8 percent age points between the 1999 and 2004 elections (Deshpande 2004).1 Of course, this varied from state to state. In 2004, the gap between turnout of men and women was very low in the north-eastern region. But in most other states the gender gap in