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August 13, 2012, 4:20 AM
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A Conversation With: Social Scientist
Anandi Mani
By SRUTHI GOTTIPATI
Anandi Mani, an associate professor at the
University of Warwick in Britain, is one of the
authors of a study on women’s political
representation and its effect on crime in India. As
the government reserves for women a third of all
seats in local government institutions like the
village council, the researchers sought to find out
whether having female political leaders at the
Courtesy of Anandi Mani
local level would have a positive effect on women.
Anandi Mani.
Instead, they found that the reported number of
crimes against women rose. Ms. Mani explained
in an e-mail interview with India Ink why that’s not bad news.
Q.
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Could you tell me a little bit about your study? Why did you want to do
this study?
The Panchayati Raj [village council] reform law was passed officially in
1993 for local government. There has been a lot of resistance to
repeated attempts to have similar reservation for women leaders at other
levels of government. Some of the arguments against such reservation have
been that women who lack experience will not be competent leaders. There is
also a perception that women political representatives may be just fronts for
the political agenda of their husbands or other powerful males in their area.
A.
One motivation for such a reservation is to improve outcomes for women
directly. So we thought it would be interesting to examine specifically how
having women political representatives has affected a very core outcome for
women — safety and security.
Q.
A.
Could you take me through the process and what you found?
When we looked at how crime outcomes against women changed before
and after political representation, we found that crimes against women
had increased overall, as well as in specific categories such as kidnapping and
rape. This was very disturbing at first pass. It suggested that either there was
http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/13/a-conversation-with-social-scientist-anandi-mani/[14/08/2012 10:19:26]
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A Conversation With: Social Scientist Anandi Mani - NYTimes.com
a lot of resentment and retaliation against women leaders or that women
leaders were quite incompetent.
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But we found that it was not explained by the incompetence of women
political representatives, because there were no increases in crimes unrelated
to women, such as economic crimes or kidnapping of men.
Special Series
As researchers, we were also aware that official crime records data may not
fully capture ground reality. Especially in developing countries, it could be
fraught with problems in documenting crime. Typically, this would mean that
crimes against women would be underreported. This could be either due to
the prejudiced attitudes towards them from the police who may not record
crimes against them. Or women themselves may be reluctant to report crimes
because of shame or fear of retaliation.
In our particular context, we wondered whether this increase in crimes
against women may actually be good news because women leaders may
actually be encouraging more reporting of crimes against women. If we did
not account for this, we could be jumping to the wrong conclusions. Here is a
recent example of how crime data can lead people to wrong
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interpretations/conclusions.
One way to check this could have been to match up official records with
victimization surveys of individuals, which could tell us if official statistics are
widely off from what individuals report when interviewed. Unfortunately, in
the Indian context, the handicap is that no such nationwide surveys exist,
unlike in other countries such as the U.S. So we decided to address this
challenge by looking at different pieces of related evidence. Specifically, we
looked at how responsive the police were to crimes against women and also
women’s perceptions of their interaction with law enforcement authorities.
Q.
A.
What did you find?
We found that firstly women were more satisfied in their interaction
with the police in areas where local government leaders were women.
Secondly, not only the number of recorded crimes but also the number of
arrests for crimes against women was higher under women leaders. Both
facts suggested that the police were being more responsive to crimes against
women.
Based on nationwide surveys, we found that people do think that having
influential people, such as their local government leader, on their side makes
the police more responsive to their concerns when they go to the police
station. All of this led us to conclude that the observed increase in official
crime data was in fact good news, driven by greater reporting and recording
of crimes rather than an actual increase in crimes against women.
Q.
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I am not surprised by this finding. In fact, this is consistent with the
findings of a study on the police force in Rajasthan, which we cite in our
paper. Only about half the cases of rape were documented by the police,
whereas over 90 percent of crimes such as burglary were likely to be
reported.
A.
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Anything else you found interesting in the study?
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It was interesting to us that women political representatives had more
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A Conversation With: Social Scientist Anandi Mani - NYTimes.com
of an effect on crime outcomes at the lowest rungs of government,
where women victims have the greatest proximity or access to them. And this
is despite the fact that women political representatives have no official
authority over the police. Law and order falls under the control of state
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governments, not the local government. All this suggests that women leaders
and representatives have an effect because women find in them someone who
is sympathetic to their concerns and able to get the police to be more
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responsive.
August 14, 2012, 5:07 am
Q.
I took a look at the latest crime bureau statistics and found that states,
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like Kerala, typically considered better places for women to live in,
reported the highest crime rates against women. Does your study explain
NYTimes Opinion
some of that phenomenon?
FRIEDMAN
A.
Again, this is consistent with our findings. We do find that in districts
with higher literacy, having a woman leader increases the documented
crimes against women. It is quite plausible that educated women are better
equipped or empowered to report crimes committed against them. And that
law enforcement officials take them more seriously.
Q.
A.
What benefits in the long term can women expect from quotas?
Over the long term, political representatives could give women a better
platform to have their voice heard in terms of what they expect from the
governance process. We do find that over the long term, places that have had
longer exposure to women leaders more often see a downturn in crime rates.
Women leaders could be creating a virtuous cycle on crime outcomes because
greater responsiveness of the police would encourage more women victims to
come forth and hence deter crime over the long term.
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Other related research has found that women tend to attend meetings more
often and speak up during them when there are women leaders. Political
representatives could also encourage more women to stand for public office
and participate in politics. Women leaders could be role models for the
younger generation.
(Interview has been lightly edited and condensed.)
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