Women’s political representation: Navigating barriers and shaping impacts

India, with the world’s biggest written constitution and as the largest democratic country, upholds its core values of liberty, equality, and justice. However, despite having a democratic representative government, half the population still remains low in higher levels of politics. During the 78 years of independence, Indian politics has witnessed the coming to power of only one-woman Prime Minister as Indira Gandhi and two women Presidents; Pratibha Patil and Draupadi Murmu respectively. The reason behind the disparity in higher politics is; absence of reservation policy in national politics for women, lack of encouragement, institutional and systematic barriers, patriarchal attitude of the society, economic constraint, lack of internal democracy within political parties, and socio-cultural barriers which further hinder their political involvement. The main objective of this research paper is to navigate the barriers which is faced by women during the course of their political journey and how they hinder their ability to reach the higher levels of politics when she is not in decision making body. The paper also aims to provide some strategic recommendations that can further aid in the empowerment of women representation in politics. This paper is based on secondary data from newspaper articles, publications from government sources, journals, magazines, Election Commission of India data, and various reports of the Gender Gap Report, Inter Parliamentary Union Reports, and other relevant sources. The aim of the study is to facilitate the involvement of women in the political sphere, which would further boost their representation and advocate reforms which also align with the ultimate SDG goals of reducing gender inequality (SDG 5) and reduced inequality (SDG 10).