Tara Krishnaswamy: What It Takes For Women To Have A Career In Politics?

Over the years, Political Shakti’s Tara Krishnaswamy has been leading the citizen-led campaigns that have consistently worked on reviving the discussion and pushing for higher political participation of women at all levels.

In this third episode of ‘Women in Governance’, Tara talks about the book ‘Her Right to Equality, From Promise to Power’, that unravels the blind spot and the reason why we don’t talk about the fact that over 70 years of Indian democracy, how we fail to function anywhere near adequate representation for 50% of the population in a representative democracy.

According to Tara, this is a shocking fact that we continue to ignore, and she explains how the book peels back that onion on women's representation in an essay and some intriguing aspects of what it takes to simply have a career in politics for women. And what happens to women and her role, if her party wins. “Does she get to the decision-making committee?”, or “Does she always go to the women's wing?”, are some of the commonly asked questions that Tara seeks to challenge the status-quo.

Amongst other things, she highlights in this episode’s discussion on how women’s political campaigns are different from the men’s ones; and how it benefits women when women run campaigns. Watch her speak around these behind-the-scenes political campaigns in our third episode of Women in Governance with Tara Krishnaswamy.

Watch the second episode of Women in Governance here Tara Krishnaswamy: Are Women Interested and Winnable in Politics?

(Interviewed and produced by Poorvi Gupta, video edited by Nang Tanvi)