Tokenism or Agency? The Impact of Women's Reservations on Village Democracies in South India

There is increasing interest in whether improving the participation of women in government will lead to more gender equality. We test this with data collected from South India, using a natural experiment that randomly reserves one-third of all presidencies in democratically elected village councils...

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Main Authors:	Ban, Radu, Rao, Vijayendra
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	EN
Published:	2012
Subjects:	Models of Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior D720 Economics of Gender Non-labor Discrimination J160 Economic Development: Human Resources Human Development Income Distribution Migration O150 Formal and Informal Sectors Shadow Economy Institutional Arrangements O170 Economic Development: Regional, Urban, and Rural Analyses Transportation O180
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/4955

id	okr-10986-4955
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-49552021-04-23T14:02:20Z Tokenism or Agency? The Impact of Women's Reservations on Village Democracies in South India Ban, Radu Rao, Vijayendra Models of Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior D720 Economics of Gender Non-labor Discrimination J160 Economic Development: Human Resources Human Development Income Distribution Migration O150 Formal and Informal Sectors Shadow Economy Institutional Arrangements O170 Economic Development: Regional, Urban, and Rural Analyses Transportation O180 There is increasing interest in whether improving the participation of women in government will lead to more gender equality. We test this with data collected from South India, using a natural experiment that randomly reserves one-third of all presidencies in democratically elected village councils (panchayats) for women candidates. Previous research has found that such "reservations" result in policy decisions that are closer to the preferences of women; qualitative research has argued, conversely, that it results in token appointments in which women are appointed by elites and are poorly educated and aged. We do not find evidence in favor of the tokenism hypothesis, finding that women leaders are drawn from the upper end of the quality distribution of women. However, we find that female leaders perform no differently than male leaders. Our results also indicate that institutional factors matter much more for women than for men: women perform better than men in situations in which they have more political experience and live in villages less dominated by upper castes. 2012-03-30T07:30:33Z 2012-03-30T07:30:33Z 2008 Journal Article Economic Development and Cultural Change 00130079 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/4955 EN http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo World Bank Journal Article India
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	EN
topic	Models of Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior D720 Economics of Gender Non-labor Discrimination J160 Economic Development: Human Resources Human Development Income Distribution Migration O150 Formal and Informal Sectors Shadow Economy Institutional Arrangements O170 Economic Development: Regional, Urban, and Rural Analyses Transportation O180
spellingShingle	Models of Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior D720 Economics of Gender Non-labor Discrimination J160 Economic Development: Human Resources Human Development Income Distribution Migration O150 Formal and Informal Sectors Shadow Economy Institutional Arrangements O170 Economic Development: Regional, Urban, and Rural Analyses Transportation O180 Ban, Radu Rao, Vijayendra Tokenism or Agency? The Impact of Women's Reservations on Village Democracies in South India
geographic_facet	India
relation	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo
description	There is increasing interest in whether improving the participation of women in government will lead to more gender equality. We test this with data collected from South India, using a natural experiment that randomly reserves one-third of all presidencies in democratically elected village councils (panchayats) for women candidates. Previous research has found that such "reservations" result in policy decisions that are closer to the preferences of women; qualitative research has argued, conversely, that it results in token appointments in which women are appointed by elites and are poorly educated and aged. We do not find evidence in favor of the tokenism hypothesis, finding that women leaders are drawn from the upper end of the quality distribution of women. However, we find that female leaders perform no differently than male leaders. Our results also indicate that institutional factors matter much more for women than for men: women perform better than men in situations in which they have more political experience and live in villages less dominated by upper castes.
format	Journal Article
author	Ban, Radu Rao, Vijayendra
author_facet	Ban, Radu Rao, Vijayendra
author_sort	Ban, Radu
title	Tokenism or Agency? The Impact of Women's Reservations on Village Democracies in South India
title_short	Tokenism or Agency? The Impact of Women's Reservations on Village Democracies in South India
title_full	Tokenism or Agency? The Impact of Women's Reservations on Village Democracies in South India
title_fullStr	Tokenism or Agency? The Impact of Women's Reservations on Village Democracies in South India
title_full_unstemmed	Tokenism or Agency? The Impact of Women's Reservations on Village Democracies in South India
title_sort	tokenism or agency? the impact of women's reservations on village democracies in south india
publishDate	2012
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/4955
_version_	1764393380089954304

Tokenism or Agency? The Impact of Women's Reservations on Village Democracies in South India

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