Parliament is debating reservation for women but it doesn’t have the infrastructure to receive them

This April, as three Bills that claim to champion women’s reservation move through a rushed three-day special session, it is worth pausing on a question that cuts deeper than any legislation: what does it mean to be represented, and how does one truly belong? The debate in Parliament this week has been loud, polarised, and almost entirely procedural. Lost in the noise of census data, seat counts, and federal arithmetic is a more fundamental question nobody is asking. Even if women get their one-third, is Parliament actually ready to receive them?

Let’s go back to our roots and look at the Indian Constitution, adopted in 1950. It was itself a radical document in this regard, and it did not arrive at equality by accident. It was argued for, line by line, by women who understood that the founding text of a new nation would set the terms of participation for generations to come. The fifteen women of the Constituent Assembly, among them pioneers like Hansa Mehta, Amrit Kaur, and Dakshayani Velayudhan, ensured that gender equality was woven into the very fabric of our democracy. Their contributions remind us that women have always been at the table, shaping the nation’s fundamental rights and social justice. That founding generation understood something we are still learning to act on, that formal equality in law means nothing if we don’t have institutions that make it real.

If a law was supposed to fix everything, then what happened in 2024? In 2024, the first general election was held after the passage of the Women’s Reservation Act. India elected only 74 women to a 543-seat Lok Sabha, a share of 13.6%, actually lower than the 14.4% returned in 2019. The timing makes that decline especially striking, as it was the first general election held after India passed the Women’s Reservation Act, a law designed to reserve one-third of legislative seats for women once it comes into force. The country passed a transformative law to increase the number of women in Parliament and then watched the numbers decline in the very next election. Clearly, a thumping speech in Parliament and the photo ops were not the solution. If we want women to not just enter our legislatures but to stay and lead, we need to ask a harder question: are our institutions actually ready for them? Moving beyond the promise of representation, we must look at the infrastructure, procedures, and culture that dictate India’s political life.

Firstly, a primary area for growth lies in the physical design of our workspaces or the new Parliament, which currently lacks the facilities necessary for women to perform their duties. During an all-party meeting in 2025, MP Fauzia Khan highlighted that even in the new Parliament building, restroom layouts could be improved for better privacy and that there is a pressing need for crèches and breastfeeding rooms for young mothers. These are not merely logistical details but are essential components of a modern workplace that determine the terms on which any individual can participate in public life. By conducting mandated infrastructure and accessibility audits, we can ensure that the House is as welcoming in its design as it is in its democratic principles.

Secondly, true institutional change also requires us to examine how procedural norms influence who holds real authority. While we talk about women’s representation in the two houses, an essential component of the parliamentary system is the standing committees that help deliberate on the demand for grants of respective ministries and discuss crucial bills and depose private entities on important issues. Currently, women MPs chair only two of the thirty-six Lok Sabha committees, one of which is the Committee on Empowerment of Women, an all-women body. To avoid the perception that gender justice is solely a women’s issue, it is important to see more women in high-influence roles, such as committee chairpersons and chief party whips, and to systematically adopt gender-neutral language in parliamentary proceedings, as advocated by MP Priyanka Chaturvedi in the Rajya Sabha. By reconstituting key committees and investing in professional development, we can ensure that women are positioned to lead across all sectors of policy and governance.

Lastly, a supportive ecosystem also requires a renewed commitment to safety and professional standards within the political sphere. In September 2025, the Supreme Court of India dismissed a petition seeking to extend the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 (POSH Act) to political parties, stating that it could open a potential “Pandora’s box.” Rather than viewing this as a hurdle, political organizations have an opportunity and a responsibility here to lead by example, adopting independent, time-bound complaint mechanisms and robust whistleblower protections. Reforms such as electoral disqualification for those convicted of sexual offences, and voluntary internal party quotas would reinforce the signal that the political arena is a safe and professional environment for everyone.

Ultimately, the success of the Women’s Reservation Act will not be measured by the number of seats carved out in a hasty session, nor by which Census data was used, nor by how many states gained or lost in the bargain. It will be measured by whether the women who enter our legislatures can stay, lead, and be heard. A reservation that deposits women into an institution that was never designed for them is not empowerment. It is optics. Before we debate the architecture of constituencies, we must fix the architecture of the building itself, its committees, its culture, its corridors, and its conscience. Women do not just deserve a seat. They deserve a Parliament that is ready for them.

Natasha Singh is a Senior Analyst at TQH.