‘What Women Want’ by Ruhi Tewari: How women vote, why it matters

Name: What Women Want: Understanding the Female Voter in Modern India
Author: Ruhi Tewari

This book analyses the rising power of the woman voter

Chander Suta Dogra

Updated At : 05:27 AM Nov 02, 2025 IST

What Women Want: Understanding the Female Voter in Modern India by Ruhi Tewari. Juggernaut. Pages 272. Rs 599

Book Title: What Women Want: Understanding the Female Voter in Modern India

Author: Ruhi Tewari

Now that the woman voter in India has moved beyond lazy mentions of “bhaiyyo aur behenon” in election manifestos to emerge at the centre of electoral politics, there is a mad scramble among political parties to craft schemes specially for her. The unprecedented assertion of women as a powerful vote bank in India is a subject crying out for a deeper study. Do women vote differently from men? Are they content to be mere “labharthis” of government schemes, or do they desire something more? And, most importantly, do caste and religion still trump gender when she queues up to cast her vote?

Long-time political journalist Ruhi Tewari set out to do just that. Her book, ‘What Women Want — Understanding the Female Voter in Modern India’, analyses the rising power of the woman voter and dives into her aspirations as well as limitations. She does so through rigorous field reporting and has backed up her conclusions with data. The book is a compelling read for anyone who wants to understand this significant shift in Indian politics. It goes on to make some startling points that contradict the popular discourse that women are content with freebies.

Women today are looking at voting as a key tool of empowerment, one that can place them as equals in a deeply gendered and skewed society. In other words, they want their voice to be heard where it matters. To be recognised not just as a dependent, but a stakeholder. “It’s a recognition that is transforming Indian politics… Women value welfare not because it is free, but because it responds to real deprivation,” Ruhi writes.

But first, let’s look at how the book charts the journey that led to an increase in woman voter turnout over the years. In the third Lok Sabha election in 1962, the gender gap — the turnout of male as against female voters — was as high as 16.7 per cent. In 2024, women voters exceeded men by 0.2 per cent. Among the several events that mark this journey are the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendment Acts brought in by the Narasimha Rao government in the ’90s. The introduction of reservation of one-third seats in Panchayati Raj Institutions and urban local bodies for women became an effective instrument for increasing their political engagement.

Then came MGNREGA, the UPA government’s flagship rural job guarantee scheme. The Act stipulated equal pay for men and women and mandated that at least 33 per cent of the workers be women. The scheme drew some criticism, but the book points out that critics overlooked what it was quietly achieving. It offered women economic independence, enabling them to work in their villages and became a safety net of sorts. By 2013-14, women constituted 53 per cent of the MGNREGA workforce and reveled in the altered household dynamics this resulted in.

When the Modi era began in 2014, the BJP was hard at work, bringing in for the first time the concept of a ‘woman vote’. The Prime Minister launched ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’ and focused on basics such as toilets, clean cooking fuel in rural homes and other welfare schemes. He put women at the centre of national campaigns and welfare politics. Social media amplified his message. Others who had sensed the power of the woman vote were also doing the same, be it Bihar’s Nitish Kumar, Odisha’s Naveen Patnaik and Arvind Kejriwal in Delhi.

The BJP’s women-oriented approach led to a remarkable transformation in the awareness and assertiveness of women in the democratic process. As Ruhi points out, “She doesn’t want just a handout, but a shot at dignity. She wants to move beyond survival. She wants real opportunities.”

All this only means that the political class has to keep reimagining its outreach towards women. If the mixer-grinder has given way to pucca houses, tomorrow it will have to be something more meaningful.

The book also explores the role of caste and faith, noting that even though women are increasingly placing their gender at the centre of political choices, it does not always override other identities. The woman voter is not a monolith, but recent trends show that women are more likely to detach themselves from fixed identities of caste and faith, and bypass ideological loyalty in favour of everyday solutions. For the Hindu woman voter, religion is not the primary voting motivation. They would rather extract something concrete for themselves and are less likely to fall for emotive issues like religion.

However, the average Muslim woman voter carries the burden of her religion, though she desires the same things as her Hindu counterparts: employment, a better standard of living and welfare benefits. In the heightened communal atmosphere, where BJP’s majoritarian stance is magnifying their vulnerability, the Muslim woman is choosing the safety and protection of her community. She feels targeted on religious grounds. They are increasingly voting in alignment with their menfolk and taking strategic decisions to ally with whichever party appears most capable of countering the BJP’s majoritarianism.

Ruhi Tewari has painted a dismal portrait of the Muslim woman voter who has much to gain from development initiatives, just like the others, but finds herself compelled to vote from a place of fear. She writes, “Until that fundamental insecurity is addressed, her vote will remain cast in the shadow of religion.”

— The reviewer is a senior journalist

‘What Women Want’ by Ruhi Tewari: How women vote, why it matters

This book analyses the rising power of the woman voter

Chander Suta Dogra

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