women as policymakers

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Wed Nov 7 14:14:30 PST 2001


"Women as Policy Makers: Evidence from an India-Wide Randomized

Policy Experiment"

BY: RAGHABENDRA CHATTOPADHYAY

Indian Institute of Management Calcutta

ESTHER DUFLO

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Department of Economics

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

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http://papers.ssrn.com/paper.taf?abstract_id=288974

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Paper ID: MIT Department of Economics Working Paper No. 01-35

Date: October 2001

Contact: ESTHER DUFLO

Email: Mailto:Eduflo at mit.edu

Postal: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Department of Economics

E52-252g

50 Memorial Drive

Cambridge, MA 02142 USA

Co-Auth: RAGHABENDRA CHATTOPADHYAY

Email: Mailto:rc at iimcal.ac.in

Postal: Indian Institute of Management Calcutta

Post Box - 16757

P.O. Alipore

Calcutta -700027, INDIA

ABSTRACT:

This paper uses political reservations for women in India to

study the impact of women's leadership on policy decision. 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 of many local public goods 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.

Keywords: gender, decentralization, affirmative action,

political economy



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