Mir Farhat
Shopian/Anantnag, Dec 14: As the polling ended in Kashmir valley today, the voting exposed that existing trend-patriarchal politics still dominates pollscape as women cast their vote not as per their choices but what their male members ask them to.
Despite having their own wish to elect a candidate to the Assembly, women, young and old, have to oblige to father, brother or husband.
Dozens of women who turned out to vote told Excelsior in polling booths in Shopian and Anantnag districts said that they too have their choices to elect a candidate, but for their male family members.
Saima Jan, who awaited for her turn in a long queue at a polling station in Girls School, Shopian said that their male members asked them to vote for a particular party.
“My father and brother told me to vote and I came. I too have my choice but I have to obey my father,” Saima, 25, said.
Recalling the time she came out of her home after breakfast, she said it was like a sermon by her father.
“Wait for your turn and when it comes your turn, press the button with a particular party’s symbol. Don’t make haste, else your vote will get waste,” she recalls.
Her friends who too queued up behind and infront of her too echoed what she said: “We voted out of our choice because our male members told us so.”
A large number of women waiting for their turns at different polling stations in these two districts said that it was not fair that women have to fall in line with what their male members ask them to do in voting.
Firdousa Akhter, 26, at Chitragam polling booth in Wachi, said that it is always male members who have a say in all the family affairs.
“And even in voting we have to oblige them,” Firdousa said after casting her vote.
The eligible women voters that figure at 34, 31,844 contribute about 50 per cent to the state’s electorate. Despite that only 3 percent of the candidates are women in the ongoing Assembly who are contesting elections, which is still far away from the 33 per cent reservation for women that has been raked up for years now by all political parties.
“It is sad that our political choices are decided by our men,” said Fatima Banoo, 46, after exercising her franchise in Kadipora polling booth in Anantnag town.
“I wish females here have their own choices in electing candidates,” she added.
The politics of the state unlike other states is considered a bastion of males as only few women have been able to make their presence felt in State’s political stage. Women’s participation in politics in the state is always dictated by family background.
In the ongoing elections, major political parties-NC (5), Congress (3), PDP (1) and BJP (2) fielded only 12 female candidates, with a few contesting as independents. Among these women, most have political background.
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