By Robert Clements
Woman’s Reservation: A Step Backwards..!
The other day I watched a group of women before a meeting, planning the events. It was strategic. It was, if you ask me, better organised and dramatically executed than most cabinet meetings, with timelines that actually meant something, responsibilities that were clearly assigned, and follow ups that did not vanish into thin air like election promises.
And as I stood there, pretending to check my phone while actually listening with great national interest and mild personal fear, I wondered why on earth we think women need “reservation” to prove their worth.
Now before you raise your eyebrows, close this page, and declare me unfit for polite society, hear me out.
Reservation, in its purest form, is meant to uplift those who have been denied opportunity. It is meant to level a tilted playing field. It is a crutch given to someone who has been forced to limp for too long. But when you offer that same crutch to someone who has the ability to run faster, think sharper, and manage three crises at once while we men are still locating the crisis, it begins to look less like support and more like a very polite insult wrapped in legislative paper.
It is like telling a marathon runner, who has already finished two laps and is asking where the finish line is, “Here, take this walking stick, you might need it.” She looks at you, then at the stick, and then wonders if you have been watching the same race.
Women today are not waiting at the starting line adjusting their shoelaces. They are already halfway down the track, dragging along families, careers, aging parents, school projects, social obligations, and sometimes husbands who are still wandering around the house asking, “Have you seen my socks?”
In my own home, I have noticed something rather interesting, and slightly terrifying if you look at it closely. When something goes wrong, we men call it a problem, discuss it, analyse it, maybe even form a small committee around it, and then feel satisfied that we have done something constructive. When my wife handles it, it quietly becomes part of a new system that ensures it never happens again.
Electricity bill unpaid. She has a system. Guests arriving unannounced. She has a system.
The maid deciding that attendance is optional. She has a system. Me forgetting her birthday or our wedding anniversary. Well, for that she has something far more powerful than a system, something that does not require electricity, internet, or parliamentary approval.
And yet, here we are as a nation, standing up in Parliament and declaring with great seriousness, “Let us reserve seats for women.”
This, when I have seen better speeches from lady members than the jeers, sneers, interruptions, and table thumping that some of the men specialise in, as though Parliament were not a place of governance but a wrestling ring where the loudest shout wins the match.
Hey Parliamentarians, may I make a small suggestion from the safety of my living room where the only opposition I face is far more intelligent and far less forgiving. Instead of reserving seats, why not remove the invisible barriers that you have quietly built over decades which stop capable women from entering politics in the first place.
Why not ensure safety so that stepping out into public life is not an act of courage but a normal decision. Why not ensure equal opportunity so that talent is not filtered through bias. Why not create systems where merit is recognised without attaching a label that quietly whispers, “You got in because we made space for you.”
Because let us be honest with ourselves, and this is where it gets uncomfortable. The moment you reserve a seat you also plant a seed of doubt. Was she chosen because she is capable, or because she fits the category that fills the quota. That question may not be asked loudly, but it lingers in corridors, it floats in drawing room conversations, and worst of all, it sometimes settles in the minds of the very women we claim to empower.
And doubt, my dear friends, is a far heavier burden than discrimination, because discrimination can be fought, but doubt seeps in quietly and begins to fight from within.
I have seen women lead schools with discipline, companies with vision, hospitals with compassion, and homes with an efficiency that would put most corporate management systems to shame. I have seen women handle crises with calmness, take decisions with clarity, and move forward without needing applause or approval.
They do not need a reserved chair. They need the chair to stop being quietly kept aside for the wrong people.True empowerment is not about giving space in a room. It is about removing the walls that stop someone from entering that room in the first place. It is about ensuring that when a woman walks in, nobody asks why she is there, but instead listens to what she has to say.
If a woman walks into Parliament, let it be because she walked in with ability, determination, and perhaps a well-deserved impatience with nonsense, not because someone politely held the door open and said, “Please come, we have kept a seat for you.”
Because the day we stop reserving seats for women, whether in Parliament, in buses, or in our own thinking, will be the day we finally stop treating them as exceptions and start recognising them as equals.
And knowing the women I have seen planning meetings, running homes, and quietly fixing the world one system at a time, I have a feeling that when that day comes, they will not ask for a seat at the table.
They will simply rearrange the table, improve it, and ask the rest of us why it took us so long to catch up…!
(You can request for Bob’s Banter by Robert Clements as a daily column on your WhatsApp by sending your name and phone number to [email protected])
