Political Awareness and Its Impact in Political Participation: A Gender Study in Nagaland, India

The objective of this paper is to identify gender gap in political awareness and aim to analyzethe factors underlyingthe gender gap in political awareness, whether media exposure, political interest, political discussion and Socio Economic Status (SES) factors have an impact on their level of political awareness. Simultanously, whether any impact on  political awareness influences their participation in electoral activities. Findings of the study indicate that majority of women are insuficiently informed about politics and related issues whereas, majority of men have moderate awareness about politics. The voters level of political awareness is accounted for, by their level of interest in politics, paradigm of media use and frequency of political discussion, indicating that, women in Nagaland have low level of political information and could be able to strengthen their political presence only as voters. In this mode of activity, women have surpassed men by voting at a large number. However, engagement with other modes of political activities remains very much a minority pursuit for women in Nagaland. As compared to men, women’s representation in elected bodies is almost invisible. Amongst the socio-economic factors only education, place of residence and gender has positive relationship with the level of political awareness. Therefore, the result reports a high impact of political awareness on men voters’ participation in electoral actievities but a limited impact of political awareness on women voters.