The woman voter has arrived. With the gender gap in voting turning decisively in favour of women in the 2024 elections, they have travelled a long and uneven road to political visibility. Ruhi Tewari’s book takes this transformation seriously, situating women not merely as passive beneficiaries of welfare but as a consequential and increasingly discerning electorate. Drawing extensively on fieldwork across regions and decades, the book traces the historical and institutional shifts that have shaped women’s political participation in India.
Tewari structures her analysis across four broad phases, allowing the reader to see women’s voting behaviour as the outcome of slow and layered change. The first phase from 1951 to 1984 captures a period when the gender gap between male and female voters was stark, at times as high as 16 per cent. Women’s participation during this period remained limited. It was shaped by structural constraints such as illiteracy, restricted mobility and entrenched patriarchal norms. Voting decisions were often mediated through family and community. Political subjectivity was not absent but muted. It was circumscribed by social expectations that treated politics as a male domain.
The second phase, from 1984 to 2004, marks a crucial turning point. This period witnessed women responding politically to moments of national tragedy like the assassination of Indira Gandhi which mobilized female voters in unprecedented ways. Congress won a decisive 414 seats in the election following her demise. At the same time, structural reforms at the grassroots level, particularly the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments, altered the terrain of women’s political participation. The introduction of 33 per cent reservation for women in Panchayati Raj Institutions ensured that women were no longer just voters but also stakeholders in local governance.
Yet, as Tewari carefully notes, this was also a period marked by deep paradoxes. While the state appeared committed to enhancing women’s participation, political decisions such as the handling of the Shah Bano case revealed the willingness of the political class to appease religious hardliners at the expense of women’s rights. The promise of inclusion thus coexisted with moments of retreat. This phase also saw the growth of the Self-Help Group (SHG) Movement, with women at its core. SHGs not only provided financial literacy and collective strength but also functioned as informal political training grounds, where women learned to negotiate, articulate demands and engage with the state. Measures such as maternity benefits further facilitated women’s entry into the workforce.
The period from 2004 to 2014 witnessed the consolidation of several women-centric policies. Schemes such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) played a particularly significant role by guaranteeing equal wages for men and women and ensuring a substantial female workforce. MGNREGA, as Tewari suggests, did more than provide employment. It brought women into public spaces and familiarized them with the language of rights and entitlements. Women’s presence in public life during this phase became increasingly visible, though still uneven across regions and social groups.
The post-2014 phase marks what the author identifies as a qualitative shift in how women are imagined by the political establishment. With Narendra Modi’s emergence on the national stage, women were increasingly portrayed as a powerful and decisive electorate. A slew of targeted schemes from Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao to Ujjwala explicitly addressed women as direct beneficiaries of the state. State-level initiatives such as Ladki Bahin and Lakhpati Didi further reinforced this trend. Tewari also highlights the role of the smartphone revolution in narrowing the information gap between men and women. Greater access to information, combined with social media and messaging platforms, has made women voters more aware.
Based on extensive interviews across the country, Tewari concludes that women do, in fact, vote differently. Women voters tend to prioritize outcomes over ideology and focus on daily-centred requirements. Issues such as health, education, clean drinking water, safety and household welfare rank consistently high in women’s electoral priorities. One of the earliest and most cited examples of women-focused welfare was the distribution of mixer-grinders by J Jayalalithaa in Tamil Nadu. Though widely mocked by critics, the scheme resonated deeply with women acknowledging their unpaid labour and everyday struggles in ways mainstream political discourse often ignored.
Post-2014 welfare politics has expanded this logic nationally. While women have responded positively to targeted benefits and subsidies, Tewari remains cautious about overstating the emancipatory potential of welfarism. Government schemes can provide the initial push towards empowerment, but they are insufficient in the absence of a sustained ecosystem that ensures long-term independence. Importantly, the author notes that women who benefit from welfare schemes do not remain confined to gratitude politics. They go on to demand better roads, improved healthcare and meaningful employment opportunities. This challenges the simplistic assumption that women voters can be permanently secured through short-term benefits alone.
Despite women emerging as a crucial electorate, their political representation remains limited. Substantial numbers of women are visible primarily at the level of Panchayats and local self-governments, where reservation policies have made a tangible difference. Representation in State assemblies and Parliament continues to lag in the absence of comprehensive seat reservations. Bihar’s decision to introduce 50 per cent reservation for women in local bodies stands out as a significant intervention. Similarly, Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, with its relatively higher number of women candidates and flagship schemes like Kanyashree, demonstrates how women-centric policies can cut across caste and community lines.
One of the more nuanced contributions of the book lies in its discussion of Muslim women voters. Tewari draws attention to their paradoxical position. While Muslim women share developmental aspirations similar to their Hindu counterparts, the pervasive fear of communal targeting often compels them to prioritize safety over other concerns. The book also notes that overt communal rhetoric by ruling parties does not always perturb women voters in predictable ways, suggesting a complex negotiation between fear, pragmatism and hope.
The book’s strengths lie in its rich empirical base and its insistence on taking women voters seriously as political actors. By foregrounding women who constitute nearly half the electorate, Tewari fills a significant gap in the literature on Indian elections. However, the analysis occasionally falls short of fully problematizing the assumed link between beneficiary policies and electoral support. The book does not sufficiently engage with criticisms levelled against flagship schemes such as Ujjwala or Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao including concerns about inadequate implementation, declining allocations to programmes like MGNREGA and the disproportionate emphasis on publicity over substantive delivery.
The book also tends to treat women voters as a relatively homogenous category paying limited attention to regional and structural variations. In States like Assam, for instance, higher female voter turnout in certain districts is shaped by male outmigration and anxieties surrounding citizenship verification. Here, voting becomes not merely a civic act but a crucial assertion of belonging. Such exceptional cases complicate any straightforward reading of increased turnout as a marker of empowerment alone. Similarly, while the author acknowledges the dilemma faced by Muslim women voters, the broader processes of political polarization that produce this dilemma remains underexplored.
Despite these limitations, What Women Want is an important and timely intervention. Tewari successfully flags key questions about gender, welfare and electoral politics, even if she does not always pursue them to their analytical limits. The book invites scholars, policymakers and political actors alike to rethink women as a complex, demanding and increasingly influential political constituency. In doing so, it makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of contemporary Indian democracy, one that is being reshaped in significant measure by the choices women make at the ballot box.
Parvin Sultana teaches Political Science at Pramathesh Barua College, Assam. She writes on various socio-political issues with special focus on gender and minority rights.