In India, women make up over half of the grassroots political workers below state level working tirelessly in the field, but they’re dramatically underrepresented in Indian State Parliaments. As a result, critical women's issues like education, property rights, and safety are systemically overlooked. To move up, these women need to be nominated by their party leaders, 90% of them men.

 

Shakti, an NGO fighting for gender equality, and Times of India, India’s leading daily, wanted to make it impossible for male-dominated parties to turn a blind eye towards available female candidates and to nominate them to contest state elections.

 

Our challenge was to motivate female party workers–victimized by years of systemic bias–to ask for their due, while making male party leaders look up and acknowledge women party workers’ achievements and potential. For this, a classic campaign approach would not suffice.