The Power of Political Voice: Women's Political Representation and Crime in India

Iyer, Lakshmi; Mani, Anandi; Mishra, Prachi; Topalova, Petia

doi:10.1257/app.4.4.165

Cited by 229 publications

(326 citation statements)

References 37 publications

(39 reference statements)

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“…As in Iyer et al . (), we use plausibly exogenous state‐specific variation in the implementation of the mandate and obtain separate RD estimates for women's candidacy response to women winning for periods before and after the implementation of the local government quota.…”

Section: Mechanisms and Further Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The numerical under‐representation of women in politics is often associated with substantive under‐representation. Several recent papers find that increasing women's political representation results in policy choices that are more favourable to women (Chattopadhyay and Duflo, ; Iyer et al ., ; Rehavi, ). Moreover, women's political participation has been shown to improve broader development outcomes such as investments in children (Miller, ; Clots‐Figueras, ; Bhalotra and Clots‐Figueras, ; Brollo and Troiano, ), economic performance (Baskaran et al ., ) and corruption (Dollar et al ., ; Swamy et al ., ).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Pathbreakers? Women's Electoral Success and Future Political Participation

Bhalotra

Clots‐Figueras

Iyer

2017

The Economic Journal

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We investigate whether the event of a woman being competitively elected as a state legislator encourages the subsequent political participation of women, using a regression discontinuity design on constituency level data from India. We find that female incumbents are more likely than male incumbents to re-contest and that there is a decline in the entry of new women candidates. This decline is most pronounced in states with entrenched gender bias and in male-headed parties, suggesting an intensification of barriers against women in these areas. Similar results for (mostly male) Muslim candidates indicate the presence of institutionalized demand-side barriers rather than gender-specific preferences and constraints.Keywords: Political participation, women, candidates, gender bias, backlash, minority representation, regression discontinuity, India JEL Codes: J16, J71, P16 * Email: srbhal@essex.ac.uk; iclots@eco.uc3m.es; liyer@hbs.edu. We thank Siddhartha Bandhyopadhyay, Melissa Dell, Rafael di Tella, Tarun Jain, Akshay Mangla, Anandi Mani, Massimo Morelli, Rohini Pande, Albert Saiz and numerous seminar and conference participants for helpful comments. Damian Clarke, Maya Shivakumar, Ahmad Wahdat and the staff of Paradigm Data Services provided excellent research assistance. We gratefully acknowledge financial support from CMPO (Bhalotra), MEC grants SEJ2004-07861 and SEJ2007-67436 (Clots-Figueras) and Harvard Business School (Iyer).

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Section: Mechanisms and Further Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Pathbreakers? Women's Electoral Success and Future Political Participation

Bhalotra

Clots‐Figueras

Iyer

2017

The Economic Journal

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“…It can increase punishments and policing effort directed toward such crimes, consequently decreasing them. To the extent that most crimes are generally underreported, female representation could motivate women to come forward and report them (Iyer, Mani, Mishra, and Topalova, 2012). Members of Parliament (MPs) also have access to significant resources that can be spent on the welfare of their constituents.…”

Section: Empowering Women Through Political Representationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Using the timing of the introduction of laws that mandate arrests in domestic violence cases across states in United States, Iyengar (2009) also shows evidence consistent with backlash. Mandated political representation in local governance councils has been shown to increase reporting of crimes against women in India (Iyer et al, 2012). Our work complements this literature, illustrating that precipitation shocks increase the incidence of dowry related killings of women in India and that political representation of women in national parliament does not mitigate this risk.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dowry deaths: Response to weather variability in India

Sekhri

Storeygard

2014

Journal of Development Economics

132

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We examine the effect of rainfall shocks on dowry deaths using data from 583 Indian districts for 2002–2007. We find that a one standard deviation decline in annual rainfall from the local mean increases reported dowry deaths by 7.8 percent. Wet shocks have no apparent effect. We examine patterns of other crimes to investigate whether an increase in general unrest during economic downturns explains the results but do not find supportive evidence. Women’s political representation in the national parliament has no apparent mitigating effect on dowry deaths.

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“…Quotas in India led to heightened police responsiveness to crimes against women, improvements in children's nutrition and educational outcomes, and increased women's entrepreneurship [6] [7] [8] [9]. Also in India, both men and women in communities with quotas were more willing to contribute money to public good provision [10].…”

Section: Supporting Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

Improving women’s representation in politics through gender quotas

2018

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Gender quotas for women in local government bodies can improve women's representation in politics, increase provision of public services, and improve perceptions of women as leaders.Posters for female political candidates in India. Photo: AjayTvm | Shutterstock.com Summary:Gender quotas are one policy tool designed to increase women's representation in politics. Women hold fewer than 25 percent of parliamentary seats worldwide, and just 12 percent of the world's heads of state and government are women. In many countries this imbalance extends to local governments.Countries are taking action: In 2013, 118 countries were implementing a form of gender quotas for an elected office.One way to implement gender quotas is by reserving a certain number of leadership positions for women. A review of eleven randomized evaluations in Afghanistan, Lesotho, and across 24 states in India found that reservation quotas influenced women's political participation and policy outcomes and increased the provision of public goods aligned with female voters' preferences. Further, quotas improved men's perceptions of women as leaders, increased the aspirations of girls, and helped women get elected even after quotas were removed. Most of the rigorous research drawn on in this insight comes from India; comparative conclusions should be drawn cautiously.This evidence largely suggests that governments seeking to improve women's representation in politics should consider reservation quotas for local leadership positions. Supporting Evidence:Women leaders invested more in policies and programs women care about. Quotas are important because women may have different preferences about public goods than men.Communities in India with gender quotas for local village leaders had more public goods overall than communities without quotas, and female leaders invested more than male leaders in public goods linked to women's concerns Elected women made independent choices. One risk of gender quotas is that reserving political seats for women may not effect genuine change. For example, husbands of elected female leaders may maintain power by controlling the actions of their wives. In India, women elected under quotas were more likely than their male counterparts to state that their spouses encouraged them to stand for election and helped them do their jobs [3]. However, differences in public goods provision and policy preferences between female and male leaders demonstrate that women were able to make their own governing decisions [3].In some cases, having a female leader meant women participated more in community governance. In Afghanistan, gender quotas in village development councils led to increased women's participation in village governance, community life, and economic activities [4]. In Indian communities with quotas, women were more likely to speak in community meetings [3] [10].In Lesotho, although women in quota communities reported being less interested in politics than women in non-quota communities, they had similar levels of participation ...

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The Power of Political Voice: Women's Political Representation and Crime in India

Cited by 229 publications

References 37 publications

Pathbreakers? Women's Electoral Success and Future Political Participation

Pathbreakers? Women's Electoral Success and Future Political Participation

Dowry deaths: Response to weather variability in India

Improving women’s representation in politics through gender quotas

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