Leading by Example
If the Indian women’s reservation bill becomes law, 181 out of 543 National
legislators and 1370 out the 4109 State legislators will be women, significantly
altering the (paltry) number of elected women in the world. However, the bill
faces strong political opposition. A common concern is that gender quotas will
mainly benefit rich upper caste women and crowd out the representation afforded
to other groups, especially Muslims and poor Hindus. A related concern is that
powerful men might field their wives or daughters as their political proxies and
expect them to do their bidding.
If these were real dangers, they would certainly give pause. If quotas for women
reduce representation for the poor and religious minorities, we might want to try a
different system – and it is not clear that electing rich women whose every move
is controlled by their husbands would help the cause of poor women, or even
women in general. But is there any truth to these claims?
Fortunately, we have reliable evidence on both of these questions. India
introduced reservation for women at the Panchayat level in 1993. We have been
evaluating the results of this policy, with Raghabendra Chattopadhyay of IIM
Calcutta and others, for over ten years.
Reservation of the Pradhan position improves female representation across the
board. In two districts, Birbhum in West Bengal, and Sitapur in Uttar-Pradesh, we
found that female village leaders are as likely as male village leaders to come
from the three historically disadvantaged groups of scheduled castes, scheduled
tribes, and other backward castes. In Birbhum, we see no difference in the
representation of Muslims among male and female leaders. In Sitapur, while
female reservation reduced male Muslim representation it increased the
likelihood that Muslim women would be Pradhans. It is simply not true that
reservation for women benefits upper caste women at the expense of other
under-represented groups.
Moreover, the data clearly show that women leaders are not their husbands’
shadows. In Birbhum only 17% of female leaders report having a spouse who
was previously a Panchayat leader. We find that female leaders take different
political decisions to their male counterparts, decisions which better reflect the
preferences of women. In particular, at the local level, they invest significantly
more in water wells than men do - and wells benefit women much more than
men. Electing more women would really make a difference. Our findings strongly
contradict the anecdote that nearly every male politician in India is ready to tell that he met a woman leader in a village, and her husband was calling all the
shots.
What these anecdotes reflect, more than women’s supposed lack of autonomy, is
the prejudice they face. When we asked villagers to evaluate the same political
speech, read either by a man or by a woman, we found that those who heard the
woman were less likely either to consider the politician to be competent or to
agree with the policies she was endorsing.
However, villagers learn from experience: those who have actually been exposed
to a female leader, thanks to reservation, betray no biases against women.
Further, in villages that were previously reserved for women, women are now
more likely to stand for, and win elections.
Women are capable leaders, but face strong barriers to being elected, in part due
to discrimination. As a result, women’s interests are not adequately taken into
account in policy making, and the nation loses out on half of its political talent
pool. Reservation can help address this.
Today, India has the chance to set a powerful example for the world. Even in
countries where women’s rights have been an issue for decades, there’s still a
hum of prejudice in the background and representation of women in the top
echelons of administration (from politics to the boardroom) remains extremely
low. Giving capable women access to the powerful public positions that they
deserve, and ensuring that their abilities are seen, is the best way to ensure that
society learns to vote for women, or promote them, according to their talents,
rather than common prejudice.
Esther Duflo, is the Abdul Latif Jameel professor of poverty alleviation and
development economics at MIT.
Rohini Pande, is the Mohammad Kamal professor of Public Policy at Harvard
Kennedy School.