The Women’s Reservation Bill, which seeks to reserve one-third of all seats in the Lok Sabha and the state legislatures for women, is yet to become law despite being passed by the Rajya Sabha in 2010 itself. Other pending reforms to the electoral system include the Constitution (110th Amendment) Bill for reserving half the seats in panchayats for women and the Constitution (112th Amendment) Bill reserving one-third of elected seats in municipalities for women. Will such changes to India’s electoral democracy in fact benefit women as a whole? How can women’s political representation be increased? In this essay, I provide some answers to these questions, based on rigorous empirical research. In this context, we should remember that India has a poor record on the treatment of women. The United Nations ranked India 134th out of 187 countries in its 2012 Gender Inequality Index. Several statistics bolster this fact. The 2011 population census of India shows only 940 women per 1000 men, a result of selective abortion, female infanticide and neglect of girl children. Only 65 per cent of women were literate, compared to 82 per cent of men.