Female Political Leadership in India

Abstract

This paper is a recognition and exploration of alternative accounts of female political leadership in India, other than dynastic succession. It explores the varied paths to power which female political leaders in India have followed in the past two decades within the changing institutional environment of electoral politics. The paper argues that gender is an important factor of the path to power as well as the exercise of leadership and the sources of legitimacy that leaders draw upon. The paper critiques essentialised accounts of behavioural styles of gendered leadership, focusing on the moral capital argument. Structural gender bias and gender-biased perceptions and expectations are understood to have a significant impact on assessments of behavioural style and performance. Yet these sources of gender power can be utilised by leaders, reinforcing and legitimising stereotypes in exchange for political power. These insights are applied to the cases of three prominent female political leaders in India.

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to gratefully acknowledge comments from an anonymous referee as well as from participants at a panel at the BASAS Annual Conference, Leeds, 2004. The author is also grateful to Judith Squires and Andrew Wyatt for having read and commented on a draft of this paper.

Notes

1. Thompson and Derichs (2003) acknowledge that Sonia Gandhi, as dynastic successor, is only one of many female political leaders in India today.

2. See Kudva (2003) on this phenomenon. See also Rai and Sharma (2000) and Rai (1999) on women's reservation policy in India.

3. According to Majumdar, this appeal was powerfully packaged as voluntaristic, mirroring the public male sacrifice in the interest of the nationalist struggle (Majumdar, 2002: 22). Sarojini Naidu, a female leader of the nationalist and women's movement, also used this symbolism in her speeches (Forbes, 1982; 1998).

4. For a comprehensive account of the women's movement, see Forbes (1998) and Kumar (1989).

5. Some claim this co-option and splintering has de-radicalised the women's movement, and call for alliance formation to lobby on priority issues (Akerkar, 1995).

6. Mary F. Katzenstein (1981) argues for example that a crucial factor for women's political participation of Indian women was the support of the Congress (I) party in giving tickets to women to contest seats. Political party support of women candidates will not be discussed at length here, as this relates more to women's general participation in politics, although arguably it is a determining factor in the generation of potential future leaders.

7. These five women chief ministers were Sheila Dixit (New Delhi), J. Jayalalithaa (Tamil Nadu), Uma Bharti (Madhya Pradesh), Scindia (Rajasthan), and Rabri Devi (Bihar).

8. For an extreme example of this account, see Singh (2001).

9. Indira Gandhi and Sirima Bandaranaike, for example, have justified their capabilities or actions according to this line of thinking (see, respectively, Sunder Rajan, 1993; Hellmann-Rajanayagman, 2004).

10. For a brief review of the criticisms of gender-as-difference, see Mansbridge (2003).

11. I have discussed this above as a legacy of the nationalist movement.

12. Of course, feminist theorists have shown the public/private distinction of ‘politics’ to be deeply flawed. Here, it serves the purpose of demonstrating how gendered perceptions of authority are transferable between different sites of activity.

13. Many have claimed that the suspension of democracy during the Emergency has reduced the credibility of Indira Gandhi's claim to this title (Sunder Rajan, 1993; Carras, 1995).

14. For example, Sheila Dixit, Chief Minister of Delhi, has proved herself a very capable politician, beyond her entry into politics by way of her influential father-in-law. Dixit was re-elected in 2003 despite the anti-incumbency factor, and on the back of her many efforts to improve the city's infrastructure (The Hindu, 2003).

15. The media commented that the wedding of her foster son was allegedly used as an AIADMK publicity platform and was a controversial affair that marked the extent of Jayalalithaa's extravagance (Widlund, 2000).

16. Subramaniam (2002: 418) defines paternalist populism as ‘the idea of a benevolent leader, party, or state providing those with little social power protection from repressive elites and goods for which they need not compete’.

17. Bharti herself acknowledges the intersectional discrimination and physical violence faced by Dalit women. She asserts ‘[The Dalit woman] is hit twice, once outside the house because she is a Dalit and secondly, within the house because she is a woman’ (Bharti, quoted in Nath, 1996).

18. This refers to Rabri Devi's acquittal in relation to CBI charges against Laloo Prasad Yadav in 2000. The CBI claimed Rabri had ‘“aided and abetted” her husband's “illegal earnings”’(Frontline, 2000a) but she was later released on bail by a judge's order, who commented that: ‘The accused person's offence dates back to when she was a housewife. The Indian tradition has it that the housewife has to work according to the will of the husband’ (quoted in Frontline, 2000b). The legal judgment recognised the lack of authority and responsibility of Rabri Devi – including for her own actions – as an Indian housewife in relation to her husband. It assumed Rabri's subservience rather than complicity.