ABOUT

In India, women make up half the grassroots political workers but are extremely underrepresented in male-dominated state parliaments. Therefore, critical issues for families and women like education, safety, sanitation, and property rights are systemically overlooked. Shakti, a non-partisan NGO fighting for gender equality in politics, and Times of India, India’s leading daily, partnered to launch a campaign that made turning a blind eye towards women’s representation, impossible. We started in Bihar (population equivalent to Mexico), India’s poorest, most illiterate state, and took an accessible, universal phenomenon –the selfie– and turned it into a nomination resume, citing every woman’s credentials and accomplishments. We teamed up with 140 NGOs that reached 45000 villages to mobilize female party workers to use the ubiquitous WhatsApp to send their “Nominate-me-selfies” to their local party leaders, urging them for a ticket to contest elections. As hundreds of selfies started to pour in, women’s representation was amplified into a national issue that made front pages, garnering panel discussions and widespread coverage. Fielded candidates across political parties went up, resulting in elected women legislatives going up by 25%, the highest ever. When rolled out in Bengal (state population equivalent to Vietnam), the campaign resulted in the ruling party giving an unprecedented 45% of its tickets to women. This campaign-turned-movement is creating a pipeline of women leaders, paving the path to a true democracy, one state election at a time.