Why Some (Women) Are More Equal?: Politics of Candidate Selection among Mumbai’s Women Municipal Councillors

In India, the 74th constitutional amendment mandated the reservation of no less than one-third of the total seats for women in all urban local bodies. The city of Mumbai went a step further by increasing the percentage of reserved seats to fifty, making the numerical parity of men and women in local politics a reality since 2011. Despite the provision of reservations, not all women have an equal opportunity to be selected as an electoral candidate for the office of municipal councillor. This paper argues that although the women’s reservation appears to be an equaliser, it is effectively applied conditionally by decision-makers (mostly men) in the party when selecting candidates. Multiple factors, such as a woman’s caste, educational qualification, age, political legacy in her family, and her own track record of party work, act as variable determinants of the candidate selection. The data show that women whose husbands, fathers, or other male family members were already in politics not only had higher chances of being selected but were also sometimes compelled to accept the ticket offered to them. On the other hand, those with no political legacy in their family were offered a ticket to the election at a much older age, having spent at least a decade toiling for the political party. The study draws upon the qualitative data collected through immersive fieldwork in Mumbai, India. I conducted in-depth interviews with elected women councillors and party officials involved in the candidate selection process. The data was analysed using thematic analysis techniques. This paper contributes to the debates on gender quotas and women’s reservations by scaling it down to the city level. The findings of this paper add contextual richness and map the gendered pathways to political office in the global south.