Ladies first: Dahod knocks voter sex ratio out of park

Gujarat has 15 tribal assembly seats with more registered women voters than men, but when it comes to the state’s 26 Lok Sabha constituencies, Dahod is the only such seat where efforts made towards achieving gender equity in the electoral framework stand out — the voter sex ratio here is 1,023, the highest in the state. Sex ratio is defined as the number of females per 1,000 males.
In the 2009 and 2014 LS polls, the tribal seat had voter sex ratios of 981 and 983 respectively.The ratio increased to 990 female voters for every 1,000 male voters in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. At least in the past two general elections in the state, not a single seat has had women surpassing men, voter data reveals.
This time, Dahod is closely followed by Bardoli and Valsad seats with 967 women voters per 1,000 male electors. Navsari has the lowest voter sex ratio in the state at 857. In some heartening news though, the state’s voter sex ratio has improved from 930 in the last Lok Sabha election to 943 this year. Surat and Ahmedabad East also have skewed voter sex ratios at 871 and 911 respectively. Other districts such as Surendranagar, Rajkot, Banaskantha, Amreli, Bhavnagar and Porbandar too have ratios lower than the state’s voter sex ratio.
According to a district collector who refused to be quoted, the low voter sex ratios in Surat, Ahmedabad and Navsari can be attributed to the large number of migrants who have been living here alone for several years. These three Lok Sabha constituencies have several pockets with a large migrant population. The Udhna assembly segment in Navsari has the most skewed voter sex ratio in the state at 740.Another collec tor, who has previously worked in Saurashtra, says, “Saurashtra has a skewed sex ratio, which could be contributing to the low sex ratios in Surat and Navsari where a large migrant population from the region lives. The child sex ratios in Patel-dominant Saurashtra and Mehsana have always been under the scanner. Similarly, in Ahmedabad East, there are pockets dominated by migrants from Saurashtra and North Gujarat, contributing to a similar sex ratio pattern.”
Notably, the state registered the third most skewed sex ratio at birth in the country with 909 girls per 1,000 boys, according to the Centre’s report, ‘Vital statistics of India based on the Civil Registration System 2020.’ In the 2019 report, Gujarat registered the lowest sex ratio at birth (901), followed by Assam (903), Madhya Pradesh (905) and Jammu and Kashmir (909). In 2018, the state recorded the fi fth most skewed sex ratio at birth at 897.