ABSTRACT
To redress the representation gap between women in the population and women in Parliament, India’s Women’s Reservation Bill (WRB) calls for reserving 33% of seats in the Lok Sabha (people’s assembly) and in all state legislative assemblies for women. The WRB has been in existence for over 20 years, but despite support from India’s major national political parties, it has failed to become law. The author analyses the case of India’s WRB to understand why this might be so. The chapter begins by discussing the efficacy and desirability of quotas for women in legislatures in general and the factors that have contributed to the current stalemate around the case of WRB in particular. Of these factors, the chapter looks at what has been the most controversial: caste-based opposition to the WRB. In this context, the author discusses feminist support for and against the ‘quota-within-quota’ position, which asks for the WRB to contain a sub-quota for women of other backward classes.
