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Women in Politics
Around the world, women's political participation is restricted at all levels of governance. From being underrepresented as voters, to contesting and winning elections, women face several constraints to participating in a political life.

The 16th edition of our newsletter is about Women in Politics - with a focus on female leadership (from local governments to state and national legislatures). We compile political economy literature on effects of women's increased political representation - from affecting perceptions to improving health and education indicators. This newsletter has been curated in collaboration with Women for Politics, a research and advocacy initiative aimed towards free, fair and equal political representation and participation of women in South Asia. The initiative is a project under an upcoming think-tank on gender and politics, Centre for Gender And Politics (CGAP).

The edition also contains job and internship opportunities shared on our WhatsApp groups. It has been written and compiled by Prerna Kundu, Ridhima Singh, Sugandha Parmar and Vasanthi Swetha.

The following key denotes whether or not a particular paper is open access:
(*) : Open Access 
(#): Not Open Access 

Images used are from Images of Empowerment
Dive into Readings
Women in Politics 2021 Map
The “Women in politics: 2021” map, created by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and UN Women, presents global rankings for women in executive, government, and parliamentary positions as of 1 January 2021. The data shows all-time highs for the number of countries with women Heads of State or Heads of Government, as well as for the global share of women ministers.

How women panchayati officials in Bihar are challenging the practice of proxy candidates (*)
After Bihar introduced panchayati reservations for women, a new practice emerged with women contesting elections as practice proxy candidates. But in several villages, women challenge the status quo. Read about a few of these women in this article.

Female leaders and citizens' perceptions of political parties (#)
Do female leaders affect voters’ perceptions of political parties’ placement on the left-right spectrum? Using public opinion data on 269 parties in 35 countries between 1976 and 2016, the author shows that female-led parties are perceived  as  more  moderate  than  male-led  organizations,  even  when  accounting for voters’ prior beliefs about the party and the organization’s stated policy positions. They demonstrate that these results cannot be explained by the policy platforms authored by male- and female-led parties.The electoral manifestos produced by female-headed organizations are neither more left- leaning nor more moderate than those authored under male leaders. Together, these results provide important insights concerning citizens’ (mis)perceptions of parties’ ideological positions, party leaders’ effects on voters behavior, the importance of gender stereotypes in politics, and the policy consequences of women’s increased access to power.

Local female representation as a pathway to power: A natural experiment in India (*)
Does a numeric increase in mandated female representation influence women’s rise in the electoral hierarchy?  Women’s numeric rise in politics can break the political glass ceiling. Yet, “quota women” may lack influence. The author provides new evidence using the natural experiment of as-if-random assignment of gender reservations in the world’s largest local elections in Delhi. Each increase in reserved local constituency increases the % of local female candidates that contest higher-order state elections by 1.5 times and doubles the % of female candidates who secure party nominations. Women’s likelihood to secure party nominations increases by 5 times for local candidates and doubles for re-contesting state-level candidates. Findings highlight a new mechanism: greater local female presence during higher-order elections increases women’s influence in the party nomination process and in political campaigns. Upstream spillovers take a shorter time-horizon than widely assumed, highlighting the importance of taking the quantity and timing of female presence seriously.

Female Leadership Raises Aspirations and Educational Attainment for Girls: A Policy Experiment in India (*)
Exploiting a randomized natural experiment in India,the authors show that female leadership influences adolescent girls’ career aspirations and educational attainment. A 1993 law reserved leadership positions for women in randomly selected village councils. Using surveys of adolescents aged 11-15 and their parents, they find that, compared to villages that were never reserved, the gender gap in aspirations closed by 25% in parents and 32% in adolescents in villages assigned to a female leader for two election cycles. They find no evidence of changes in young women’s labor market opportunities, suggesting that the impact of women leaders primarily reflects a role model effect.

Powerful Women: Does Exposure Reduce Bias? (*)
The authors exploit random assignment of gender quotas for leadership positions on Indian village councils to show that prior exposure to a female leader is associated with electoral gains for women. After ten years of quotas, women are more likely to stand for, and win, elected positions in councils required to have a female chief councilor in the previous two elections. They provide experimental and survey evidence on one channel of influence—changes in voter attitudes. Prior exposure to a female chief councilor improves perceptions of female leader effectiveness and weakens stereotypes about gender roles in the public and domestic spheres.

Health and the Political Agency of Women (#)
The paper looks at whether women's political representation in state legislatures improves public provision of antenatal and childhood health services in the districts from which they are elected, arguing that the costs of poor services in this domain fall disproportionately upon women. Using large representative data samples from India and accounting for potential endogeneity of politician gender and the sample composition of births, they find that a 10 percentage point increase in women's representation results in a 2.1 percentage point reduction in neonatal mortality.

Are Female Leaders Good for Education? Evidence from India (#)
This paper shows that the gender of politicians affects the educational levels of individuals who grow up in the districts where these politicians are elected. A unique dataset collected on politicians in India is matched with individual data by cohort and district of residence. The political data allow the identification of close  elections between women and men, which yield quasi-experimental election outcomes used to estimate the causal effect of the gender of politicians. Increasing female political representation increases the probability that an individual will attain primary education in urban areas, but not in rural areas, and not in the sample as a whole.

Women As Policy Makers: Evidence From A India-Wide Randomized Policy Experiment (*)
This paper uses political reservations for women in India to study the impact of women’s leadership on policy decisions. In 1998, one third of all leadership positions of Village Councils in West Bengal were randomly selected to be reserved for a woman: in these councils only women could be elected to the position of head. Village Councils are responsible for the provision on many local public good in rural areas. Using a data set we collected on 165 Village Councils, we compare the type of public goods provided in reserved and unreserved Villages Councils. We show that women invest more in infrastructure that is directly relevant to the needs of rural women (water, fuel, and roads), while men invest more in education. Women are more likely to participate in the policy-making process if the leader of their village council is a woman.

Women’s Empowerment And Economic Development (*)
Women’s empowerment and economic development are closely related: in one direction, development alone can play a major role in driving down inequality between men and women; in the other direction, empowering women may benefit development. Does this imply that pushing just one of these two levers would set a virtuous circle in motion? This paper reviews the literature on both sides of the empowerment-development nexus, and argues that the inter-relationships are probably too weak to be self-sustaining, and that continuous policy commitment to equality for its own sake may be needed to bring about equality between men and women.
Participate in WfP's research project on women's political participation
WfP is working on a research project to understand the Political Participation of Young Women Voters in India and have prepared a survey for the same.

This survey aims to ascertain the reasons that motivate women voters today and their perception about voting. Additionally, it also tries to understand the perception of women voters about women representatives in terms of their competencies as a politician.

If you identify as a woman and fall between 15-29, please take 5 minutes and fill this survey.
 
Browse jobs and internships
Note: These are jobs shared by members over WhatsApp over the last 3 weeks. Please check if positions are still open before applying. If you are thinking about applying to one of these, you can also drop a message on the WhatsApp group or on the google group to connect with members currently working in these organisations.

1. Job Openings: 2. PhD Positions:
  • Utrecht University is seeking two candidates for two interrelated PhD projects under its Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences. The projects are part of the transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary research programme SCOOP SCOOP brings together Researchers of the University of Groningen, Utrecht University, VU Amsterdam, Erasmus University Rotterdam, and Radboud University Nijmegen. The PhD student will participate in the SCOOP PhD training programme.
3. Volunteer:
  • Centre for Gender And Politics is seeking writing and editing experts to set up an editorial team for its publications and to guide young researchers on research and writing. If you are interested in working at the intersection of gender and politics in South Asia, please write to contact@womenforpolitics.com
4. Other job resources/websites:
Have thoughts on our newsletter, or ideas for other activities we should consider? Follow us on Twitter, shoot us an email or fill out this feedback form! We’d love to hear from you and work on what we can do better!
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