Women MLAs have never exceeded 10% of Kerala legislative Assembly in its 64-year political history. Kerala elected the highest number of women MLAs in 1996-13. Since 2001, this percentage has hovered around 5%, but in 1967 and 1977, only one woman was elected to the Kerala Vidhan Sabha. In large part, there are only a few women MLAs because political parties give a small number of tickets to women to contest elections. Although parties in all the three coalitions have increased the percentage of tickets given to women since 2001, the number has never exceeded 16% of total contesting candidates. In the last Assembly election held in 2016, the Communist Party of India gave 16% tickets to women, followed by CPI(M), which gave 14% tickets. Both the BJP and the Congress gave 10% of their tickets to women.
In six decades, the percentage of women MLAs in the Kerala Assembly has never exceeded 10%
The state with some of the best human development indicators for women in India fails to ensure enough representation for them in its legislature. The state has more than 50% women s representation in local governance institutions. | Arun Sankar / AFP
Kerala’s first Member of the Legislative Assembly was a woman.
Rosamma Punnoose, 44 years-old when Kerala elected its first post-Independence Legislative Assembly in 1957, was elected from the Devikulam constituency in the Idukki district in southeast Kerala. The first MLA to take oath, she became the
protem speaker and went on to administer the oath of office to other MLAs on April 10, 1957.