Women, an advertisement for Tata tea told us when the elections were looming, could not be ignored, after all, they were 49 per cent of the population. Not to be scoffed at. So, in the ad, a strong, confident woman stood up to her politician husband, warning him, don’t ignore us, we can make or break Governments.

True enough, 49 per cent gives any group the strength to make or break. And equally true, that for women these numbers have been steadily increasing since 1962 so that today there are 803 women voters for every 1,000 men. But while we know these figures, we don’t, as yet, know nearly enough about these women. Who are they? Are they rural or urban? Where do they come from? Are they illiterate or literate? Young or old? There’s so much talk about the millions of young voters who have been added to the electoral roll this year. How many of these are women?

Every year, as the summer break comes round and universities begin to close, the inbox in our office mailbox begins to fill up with requests from young women who want to work, perhaps to intern, just do something with their holidays, perhaps as a precursor to what they might want to do later in life. In recent years, such requests have gone up exponentially. Clearly young women want to do something with their lives.

Outside of the office space, things are no different. A domestic worker asked me some weeks ago what she needed to do to find a job as a housekeeper in a hotel. A street-smart young woman now drives an autorickshaw in Delhi — the only woman to do so. Single women, those who have been abandoned by their husbands, others for whom life had more or less come to an end, today drive taxis, work as chauffeurs, salesgirls, delivery persons, petrol pump attendants and more. Something is changing here.

No doubt it is these women who voted in large numbers in the recent election. No doubt, like millions of others, they voted for the party they believed would bring change, positive change. Some have got the party they wanted, others may well be disappointed, having hoped for someone else. But now that the winning party is in place, what does the future hold for women? Will the ground gained by women activists in the last year and a half be lost? Will the aspirations of the hundreds of thousands of young women be fulfilled?

A reality check might well be in order. The BJP has never been a party that has had much to say about women — except to say that their proper place is in the home, not on the streets, or in the workplace and especially not in bars. Nor have they raised their voice when women have been attacked.

They’re not alone in this, the majority of our political leaders share this view, but some of them manage to hide it better than others. For those that don’t, women who get sexually assaulted are painted and dented, or those who don’t speak to their rapists addressing them as brothers are fairly and squarely responsible for what happens to them.

A party’s point of view often becomes manifest in the sorts of issues it raises in its election campaigns and what its leaders say in the course of their speeches. Despite the last 18 months being dominated by discussions on women’s status in India, little of this has found reflection in the noise generated by the 2014 elections. Indeed, the winning party’s agenda of ‘development’ has been offered as a sort of neutral space, one in which gender plays no role. Also political platforms, especially for the winning party, have been almost entirely male and even though a number of women have been elected, we don’t, as yet, know where they will feature in the new government.

Indeed, what we’ve had is a resounding silence — as if the 49 per cent did not really exist, or do not really matter. The coming months will unravel the truth or otherwise of this. What is certain is that if women’s rights take a backseat, the rights of other minorities and marginalised people will not be far behind.

( Urvashi Butalia is an editor, publisher and director of Zubaan;blink@thehindu.co.in )

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