Silchar, March 7: Mizoram has added another feather to its cap ? it has emerged as a state where women voters outnumber their male counterparts. The revised electoral rolls for the lone Lok Sabha seat in the state show that women voters have edged past their male counterparts by 2,272. Of the 5,50,232 voters in Mizoram, there are 2,76,252 women and 2,73,980 men.
Women had outnumbered men by 3,816 heads during last year?s Assembly polls too. It is, however, a matter of irony in the Christian state that though women voters are more in number than men, they do not shine in the same proportion on the political stage.
Mizo women do actively participate in social movements and even trade, but when it comes to party politics, they shy away. In the Assembly polls, held in the state on November 20 last year, only six women fought the elections and not even one of them won.
The contradiction is also perceptible in the frenzied electioneering by women volunteers campaigning for Mizo political parties and the calm attitude of women when they are either voting for women candidates or taking part in decision-making.
Since 1972, when the first Assembly polls took place, only one Mizo woman legislator had become a minister ? Lalhimpui of the Mizo National Front.
According to Vanchhunga, a Mizo pastor, the apathy of Mizo women towards politics is rooted in the Mizo social system, which is patriarchal and a political system in which the chief has always been a man.