State Elections in India have seen more women sweep to power- Mamata Banerjee and the All India Trinamool Congress ousted the Communist Party after 35 years of rule in West Bengal and Jayalalithaa took power in the Indian State of Tamil Nadu. This isn't really all that unusual for India- Sonia Gandhi is the most powerful person in the ruling Congress Party, Sheila Dikshit runs the capitol of New Delhi, Mayawati runs Uttar Pradesh and Pratibha Patil is currently the (largely ceremonial) President of India.
Usually a lot of these women come from political families or dynasties which isn't that uncommon throughout the region. However, what I argued in my MA thesis was that the rise to power of a lot of these women cannot be solely attributed to mere dynastic politics- which is what a lot of political scientists tend to brush this phenomenon off as. Mayawati is one example of an outsider- and now Mamata Banerjee is another. And even if you look closely at a lot of these women- their supposed rise to power through dynastic politics or the widow's mandate is nowhere near as clear-cut as political science would have us believe.
(Note to America: Mamata Banerjee and her party will now be running a state with 90 million people in it. I think it's time to elect a woman President, don't you? Further note to Iowa: let's elect Christie Vilsack to Congress, too. Time to shatter that glass ceiling as well.)
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