Agency and Choice in Women's Political Participation

Session Submission Type: Featured Paper Panel: 30-minute Paper Presentations

Session Description

India has recently witnessed significant advancements in women's electoral turnout. However, the implications of this surge in women's voter turnout for their political empowerment and substantive representation remain uncertain. In this panel, we explore the factors that enable women to exercise their agency and choice to ultimately increase their representation in the political arena. Panelists will draw on qualitative and quantitative findings to shed light on women’s agency and choice across three levels— their political capacities and skills at the individual level, agency and decision making at the household level and electoral quotas at the level of political representation. Our work also models a range of political engagement outcomes, from voting to everyday claim-making, across rural and urban settings thereby shedding light on women’s political agency and choice across contexts. Through this holistic approach, we aim to illuminate the diverse facets of women's political agency and choice, transcending contextual boundaries and offering valuable insights on their evolving roles in the political landscape in India and South Asia more broadly.

Sub Unit

• Division 31: Women , Gender and Politics Research

Individual Presentations

• Putting in the Work: Effects of Women’s Employment on Political Problem-Solving - Rashi Sabherwal, University of Pennsylvania

• How Political Participation Leads to Agency: Theory and Evidence from India - Franziska Roscher, Georgia Institute of Technology

• Electoral Quotas and Political Engagement of Non-target Groups - Komal Preet Kaur, Princeton University

Chair

• Soledad Artiz Prillaman Stanford University

Discussants

• Bhumi Purohit Georgetown University

• Anirvan Chowdhury Harvard University

• Rithika Kumar Rice University