A Fresh Look at Random Reservations for Women Representatives in India

• In Event: Gender, Quotas, and Representation

Abstract

Influential early studies of randomly (or quasi-randomly) assigned reservations for women in India’s local government bodies like the gram panchayat showed them to have important policy consequences. Outcomes such as local budget allocations seemed to shift as women suddenly came into leadership roles in randomly selected locations. Specifically, gram panchayats where the role of local council president was reserved for women tended to allocate more resources to budget areas that women are especially concerned about, such as drinking water, sanitation, and maternal care. This paper revisits the ongoing naturally occurring experiment of reservations for women in India's rural local councils, focusing on Rajasthan, where reservations have been assigned by lottery (in some districts) since the 1990s. In the spirit of replicating early analyses, we focus on the effects of reservations in two election cycles, 2005 and 2010, when reservations for women were determined by lottery throughout the state. Then, focusing on those Rajasthan districts that continued to use lotteries after 2010, we consider the long-term effects of female leadership by comparing gram panchayats where reservations for women were in place from 2005, 2010, 2015, and 2020 to gram panchayats that were never selected for such reservations. Using administrative data for outcomes, we find no evidence of substantively meaningful effects on the scale or content of public works programs, even in domains favored by women; census and statewide survey outcomes show no meaningful effects on outcomes concerning water, health, or school infrastructure.

Authors

• Donald P. Green, Columbia University

• Manu Singh, Columbia University

• Gaurav Sood, Independent