The Gender Gap in Political Participation in Nagaland

The classical liberal idea of representative democracy rests on the notion of participation of all its citizens and that every citizens input is of equal importance. Yet a number of research work finds a persistant gap in citizens political participation, with women less politically engaged than men. Understanding this participatory inequality becomes important given that gender differences in participation could reproduce gender inequalities in other domains.

Though women in Nagaland constitute almost half of the electorate of the state and are more inclined to vote than their male counterparts, they have not been able to translate this activism to most other types of electoral activities. One of the most common generalizations regarding gender gap in participation in politics is that levels of socio-economic status affect citizen's involvement in politics. This has been confirmed by a number of studies where political participation and socio-economic factors have been shown to be strongly correlated. However, explanations for sources of gender gap in political participation in Nagaland, based on socio-economic factors, appear to have weaker explanatory power. In the case of Nagaland, socio-cultural factors appear to have more influence in explaining gender differences in political participation.