Women’s Movements and State Policy Reform Aimed at Domestic Violence Against Women: A Comparison of the U.S. and India

Bush, Diane Mitsch. 1992. “Women’s Movements and State Policy Reform Aimed at Domestic Violence against Women: A
Comparison of the Consequences of Movement Mobilization in the U.S. and India.” Gender and Society 6(4):587-608

In this article the author compares the Anti Dowry Movement Movement in India and the Battered Women’s Movement in the US to analyze how ideology and structure of  two sex- gender systems shaped social movement mobilization and state response to movements.

In this article, the author sees gender as a fundamental basis for social movement organization. If the success of women’s movement was only about accessing state mechanisms, it would not reorder the inherent gender inequality within these institutions. The author contends that policy implementation occurs within a state mechanism which is relatively autonomous from sex-gender systems. She argues that a state mechanism which is autonomous of sex-gender system will include women’s demands, without necessarily transforming social relations.

The data for this paper is drawn from interviews of two successive Shelter directors in the US and by observation of meetings in these Shelters. In India, the author conducted interview with five grassroots activists from two organizations.

Battered Women’s Movement defined battering as a result of gender power structure rather than as a private problem of deviant families. Even though the BVM framed the problem as one of gender inequality, the policy was framed as one of family violence, where there was NO mention of gender inequality within the family.

In India, the incidence of dowry deaths and their recognition in Mahila  Dakshata  Samiti’s  1977  report on dowry murders led to nation wide protests. Particularly Tarvindar Kaur’s murder, led to the enforcement of the Dowry Prohibition Act and the Section 304B on dowry deaths. Here too, the authorities refused to see the woman’s welfare different from family welfare.

Analysis

In both countries, the BWM and the ADVM challenged the notion that family was a private sphere which required no state intervention and criminalized domestic violence. In the US, battering was associated with alcoholism, drugs or stress. The gender power relations were underplayed. The rhetoric was more so about sex role socialization and deviant people.

The author suggests that the ADVM has been more successful in maintaining control over the construction of domestic violence. The press continued to focus on women’s subordination in the family. I am not sure if this assumption is right.

The author argues that most domestic violence laws implicate individual men for their problems and holds the family as an intact unit. In India, the author argues the absence of a uniform civil code demonstrates that the constitutional equality provided is a moot point. Love, not power determines how laws are enacted.

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Deliberative Democracy and the Politics of Redistribution: The case of Indian Panchayats

Rai, Shirin. 2007. “Deliberative Democracy and the Politics of Redistribution: The case of Indian Panchayats.” Hypatia 22(4): 65 -80

In this article, the author examines “the process of participation by assessing whether deliberative politics, together with enhanced presence of women’s presence can help transform institutions to bring about efficient, less corrupt and gender sensitive outcomes.”        This study demonstrates that institutional reforms can strengthen deliberative politics, through which unequal power relations may be challenged.

Theoretical conceptualization:

Deliberative democracy focuses on three main aspects – process, outcome and context. The deliberative process includes collective decision making, based on arguments put forward by members who are committed to impartiality and rationality, and such that no group is more privileged to dictate what those decisions should be. The outcomes of deliberative processes are: the education of those involved in deliberations, fairness in procedures and “community generating power due to public deliberations.” However deliberations can occur only in a context which is conducive to open debate. Focusing on the context of deliberative politics raises issues of religious, moral and civil liberties, examine capacity enhancement of civic associations that can challenge well-resourced interest lobbyists and media. However, the politics of presence may determine which interests are included and excluded. Therefore, it is the reasonableness of the deliberative procedures that determine political equality.

However critics point to the structures of inequality and the concerns of public deliberation which may not be a safe place for everyone involved. Therefore, “deliberative processes need that every individual has enough resources to participate effectively in that process.” The author argues that “the quota-based participation of women in panchayats, while not reflecting all these indicators of effective freedom, does show a shift in social hierarchies and the power relations underpinning them.”

Challenges of Participatory Politics

Women Panchayat members experienced several challenges. Women are subjected to high expectations in comparison to male members. The issue of payment was critical among women, especially because they had expenses to be met as the Panchayat member and because it helped raise status in their families. Despite expectations about their performance, women are expected to be compliant. Government officials have gendered assumptions regarding their awareness and illiteracy and sometimes do not cooperate with them. Caste and class privileges influence their performance as Panchayat members. However, some lower caste families consider their family member in the Panchayat as a political resource.

Women members have used various strategies to negotiate through the Panchayat deliberative process. They have dealt with the proxy male membership in the Panchayat. Some women take support from other women and their family members. Some of them take their children along, because they believe that the male members are more civil in front of children. Political parties,  on the other hand have been traditionally gendered spaces providing lesser autonomy and marginalizing them.

Conclusion:

Rai argues that the very process of arguing for recognition leads to redistribution of discursive power and would even lead to empowered individuals influencing policy outcomes.

Gender Quotas, the Politics of Presence, and the Feminist Project

Kudva, Neema. Kajri Misra. 2008. “Gender Quotas, the Politics of Presence, and the Feminist Project: What Does the Indian Experience Tell Us?” Signs, 34(1): 49-73

In this paper, Kudva and Misra examine the gender quota experiment in India focusing on areas that they suggest have been under-theorized and overlooked by feminist theorists.  “First, the role of multiple institutional loci of change in transforming gender relations where state and civil society actors play mutually constitutive roles; second, the importance of applying the politics of scale to analyze the gender quota experiment and the possibilities it presents.”

Data:

This essay is based on field work conducted by both authors in India at different points of time and by examining literature on women’s experience in Panchayati Raj.

Theorizing the gender quota experiment in India:

Drawing from feminist theorists, the authors describe Fraser’s argument that obstacles to parity of participation in the context of globalization are three fold – recognition, redistribution and representation. Often, theorists arguing for gender equality in politics have looked at identity politics alone. In this paper, the authors seek to examine how gender quotas look beyond recognition-redistribution in a globalized world that affects the sub-national and local processes.

Secondly there are questions whether women represent women’s issues if they get elected. One position states that ethnic identities and community affiliations have greater potential for sustained action. Feminists suggest that more number of women in power, opens up space for gender consciousness. Scholars have documented gendered and casteist practices in political institutions in India. The language used in writing and speaking, segregated seating, meeting timings and locations unsuitable for women and people from lower castes,  excluding women from meetings and positions, are all ways in which discrimination is practiced. The authors state that current quota literature focuses on individuals who are able to navigate through the system. Most scholars expect positive change over time, while being cognizant of the barriers that women face. However, the authors find that literature has overlooked institution focused feminist political theorizing by focusing only on individuals. In most cases, their agency is heavily influenced by their class and caste positions. Even when NGOs seek to change institutional processes, they are often within the realms of the NGO rather than a large scale policy change.

The authors find that analysis of institutional design, often seen in decentralization literature is absent from gender quota literature.  The scarcity of resources, the state’s hesitation in sharing power and lack of authority are issues of redistribution which can affect women’s political participation. The current focus on capacities of elected women representatives without looking at issues of redistribution and recognition may be problematic. The authors call for a collective strategy for economic and gender justice by bringing in PR reforms.

Then the authors focus on two main issues – the institutional loci of change and the politics of scale. Often feminist theorizing has concentrated on social movements and civil society organizing. However gender quotas in India has been introduced by the state. Pressure from women’s movement was absent in this case. Gender quotas were mandated centrally by gender quotas. However, it was the state of Karnataka that first experimented gender quotas. Thus the loci of change oscillated between the central and the subnational state governments. NGOs, generally kept away from the PR, however later they were included in training representatives. The authors then provide the example of Mahila Samakhya as an organization which was an example of NGO- state collaboration. Being a state program, MS has to maintain a balance where it can engage in alliance building, protests, dialogue while not succumbing to state co-option.

The authors then theorize about the politics of scale. While gender quotas were first suggested by the central government, it was first implemented by Karnataka, a state government. The central government then mandated it across. However, quotas have not been implemented at the central level. Formulating collective strategies, while respecting similarities and differences at the local level, requires a scaled politics, which may be a difficult proposition.

Thus the essay highlights four main points:

1. The possibilities that local state functions of planning and service delivery present for a political agenda that seeks to correct both maldistribution and misrecognition;.
2. The importance of paying attention to organizational design and practices, which are both location specific and deeply gendered, in order to remove constraints on women’s participation;
3. The importance of understanding that the locus of change and innovation in policy experiments shifts and oscillates between the national, the subnational, and the local state, requiring feminist activists to respond equally nimbly;
4. The crucial role that scaled politics has played in the ways in which these opportunities are understood and seized by researchers, reformers, and activists

 

Caste and Patriarchy in Panchayats

Pal, Mahi. 2004. “Caste and Patriarchy in Panchayats.” Economic and Political Weekly 39(32): 3581-3583

This paper is based on the deliberations in a workshop where 188 Dalit representatives from 19 districts in Haryana participated. This state level workshop was held to understand the problems faced by Dalit women in performing their duties as elected women representatives.

The following issues emerged:

1. Illiteracy and lack of awareness about powers and functions and development schemes.
2. Encroachment of common land: The women representatives said that people from dominant castes were often encroaching into their common land and they did not receive much support from authorities in dealing with this issue.
3. Poverty and resourcelessness : Women representatives were themselves poor and often had to fund their travel from their own meager incomes.
4. Social inequality and casteism: The higher caste members of the Panchayats sometimes refused to work with the Dalit women, conducted separate meetings and expected these women to sign papers without reading them.

The author suggest that special adult education programs, capacity building programs and economic improvement are critical to ensure that women can participate equally in the Panchayat

Women and Politics: Beyond Quotas

Kishwar, Madhu. 1996. “Women and Politics: Beyond Quotas.” Economic and Political Weekly, 31(43):2867-2874

In this paper, the author provides a historical picture of women’s political participation from the time of Independence. The author demonstrates that in India, public opinion was always favorable to women’s political participation. She gives the example of how Sarojini Naidu led a group of women to demand women’s right to participate in the legislatures. The British government refused it (considering that many western countries did not have women participating), and skirted the issue to the individual provincial legislatures. The individual legislatures, however, accepted the demand. Kishwar further points out how Gandhi played a role in feminizing politics. With non-violence, with the Dandi march and with the weaving wheel, Gandhi redefined politics different from the masculine, violent form often known. Although hundreds and thousands of women participated in the independence movement, and women leaders were made head of the Congress party at various levels, women began to be marginalized after Independence. Madhu Kishwar explains that this too is due to Gandhi. Gandhi encouraged women to participate in selfless service rather than participate in mainstream politics. Thus, women became part of voluntary services although many women had organizational and political experience as part of the independence movement. Although Nehru is considered to be a supporter of women’s rights, women were not given as much participation even in his government. In the first Lok Sabha women constituted no more than 4.4%. Kishwar criticizes Nehru for breaking the self government mechanisms built by Gandhi and for building the colonial model with bureaucrats, alienating women, further more. Madhu Kishwar points out that most parties have similar statistics. Although women like Indira Gandhi and Mayawati led prominent movements and parties, they did not give opportunity for women to participate in politics. The paper provides statistics on how many women various political parties, including regional parties fielded.

Kishwar states that the NGOs working in women’s issues are often funded by international agencies and seldom have an electoral base. Currently the 73^rd amendment reserves seats for women in the local government institutions. Kishwar finds this system to be problematic. A permanent allocation of 33% seats for women would mean that men would expect women to be confined only to that number of seats. Moreover, these seats are rotated. Therefore women have lesser incentive of nurturing those constituencies. Similarly, since a seat is reserved for women, they contest only against women. This reinforces the “women are women’s greatest enemies” and this makes it even more difficult to build solidarity among elected women representatives.

Kishwar provides the case study of Sangathana, a group consisting of farmers from various castes.  They decided to form all women Panchayats in Maharashtra. Although they were able to create all women Panchayats, they could not sustain their electoral gains. They had suggestions regarding a revamp of the reservation system. They suggested that 3 Panchayats should be clubbed into one and have multi seat constituencies. This clubbed constituency would have 3 seats where one seat would be reserved for women. The other two seats would be held by anyone who has the maximum number of votes, whether male or female. The reserved seat would be kept for the woman who has the maximum vote. Thus, there would be a woman in every constituency rather than rotate the constituency where women have reservations. Moreover, women will also have the incentive to nurture that constituency. Men also would not feel forced out of their constituency. Women would also have the opportunity of contesting against men. It is likely that these three candidates could be from different parties. These changes along with other electoral reforms may be needed to ensure women’s political participation.

Engendering Grassroots Democracy: Research, Training, and Networking for Women in Local Self-Governance in India

Sekhon, Joti. “Engendering Grassroots Democracy: Research, Training, and Networking for Women in Local Self-Governance in India.” Feminist Formations18(2): 101-122.

In this article, the author analyzes the role of social movement organizations engaged in participatory action research, training, advocacy and networking with and for women at grassroots level. She argues that feminist action research, training programs, and networking are effective strategies in enabling political and social change and enhancing democracy.

Theoretical framework:

Women’s community based organizing redefined politics in two ways – one, by bringing in private matters into the realm of politics and two, by challenging the dominant liberal definition of democratic politics, based on individual rights. By doing so, they redefine democracy as a broader participatory process where citizens participate directly in decisions impacting their lives. Thus, the key objective of feminist politics has been to convert grassroots organizing to influence institutional processes. Moreover women had to be enabled to act within these institutions.

Data:

In India, NGOs have utilized participatory action research and generated knowledge from the community to design programs directed back to the citizens. In this paper, the author focuses on the work done by an organization named Aalochana, located in Pune, India. This study focuses on Aalochana’s work in participatory action research, development of training programs, and facilitation of networks to enhance community participation.

Participatory Research:

In 1992, the organization coordinated with feminist journalists to study 12 all-women Panchayats. They found that women Panchayat members gave priority to issues affecting women, although, they did not necessarily differentiate community issues from women’s issues. However, they were not successful in questioning issues such as dowry, alcoholism and distribution of household chores. Differential benefits based on caste were also seen among women. However, at the personal level, women felt that they gained recognition at the household and community level. They also experienced an increase in knowledge, mobility and confidence.

Training Programs:

Aalochana created a training kit with slide shows, booklets and posters based on participatory discussions and meetings with women in the community. These materials contained information about the levels of governance, the need to include women’s issues in governance and also introduced case studies of women’s struggles and activism.

Networking:

Aalochana invested in creating a network of community based organizations so as to sustain these activities. 25 individuals, mostly women were recruited from 10 organizations to train them on these issues. The training programs were developed through multi levels of networking. Based on their interaction with this group once in every three months, the trainees would go back to their own organizations to mobilize and organize grassroots women.

Impact:

Although a direct impact is not attributable to Aalochana’s work, the authors find that women experienced greater confidence and had a supportive network to lean on. The authors find that disadvantaged groups need such networks to create an enabling environment for their activities. Aalochana’s networking initiative demonstrates how representative politics can be aligned with participatory democracy.

In conclusion, the author suggests that feminist politics recognizes that quotas by themselves do not achieve gender equality in politics. Creating an egalitarian culture for women’s equal participation requires an enabling environment provided by these networks. Women’s movements were also critical to ensure that women were effective once they were elected. Thus,
“feminist participatory politics has the potential to challenge entrenched traditional power structures, and renegotiate power at the institutional, collective, interpersonal and personal levels.”

A Limited Women’s Empowerment: Politics, the State, and Development in Northwest India

Madhok, Sumi.2003.“A Limited Women’s Empowerment: Politics, the State, and Development in Northwest India.” Women’s Studies Quarterly31(3/4): 154-173.

In this paper, Sumi Madhok analyzes the nature and limits of collaborative politics between feminists and state led development agencies by focusing on the experiences of the Women’s Development Programme(WDP) sponsored by the state government of Rajasthan in India. Madhok writes about institutionalized feminism where the state’s development program uses the conceptual language of feminist development theorists, but does not employ the explanatory frameworks to identify and create solutions regarding women’s subordination.

Case Study:

The WDP, when it started, was a program which borrowed from feminist conceptual frameworks, international women’s development frames and the state’s own development goals. The program itself was different from other programs, where it refrained from considering women as mere beneficiaries of the state and conceived of development embedded in women’s self-empowerment. However, the author feels that the program has made a radical shift from its initial notions of empowerment whereby the program is now used to strengthen the delivery mechanisms of the state’s development activities.

This article focuses on three aspects – objectives of WDP, the experiences of the agents of change sathins, who are the women community workers and the conflicts between the state and the sathins. The WDP program was launched in 1984 in six districts in Rajasthan. The objective of the program stated, “should consist of a shift in attitude from one of compassion and welfare to that of treatment of women as equal partners with men in the family, in the social situation and economic activity, in education and culture.” The WDP took forward the empowerment agenda by supporting the creation of women’s groups at the village level and by fostering partnerships with NGOs, activists and academicians, especially to train community workers. Information Development and Resource Agency (IDARA) was the institutional set up that coordinated the technical support and training for WDP. The sathins formed the local layer of workers in this institution. The program had the standard Women In Development framework along with the more radical perspective, brought in by other organizations. Moreover, initially a large part of the funding was from UNICEF, thereby making this a low priority item for the state and consequentially, lesser interference.

The author brings out the differences between the WID and the GAD approaches even when they do not belong to water tight compartments. Both approaches believe in engaging with women’s groups. However the WID approach is about investing in skills and employment by which women’s bargaining power in the market is enhanced. On the other hand, the GAD approach was not confined to skills alone, but was invested in feminist approaches of women’s empowerment.

The sathins were trained using exercise modeled on the concept of empowerment devised by Paulo Freire, which was built on the collective knowledge shared by the group based on their own reflections of their life experiences. Morever the sathins were familiarized with the state institutions. The training also examined notions of marital rape, property rights, control over one’s body and income attitudes towards caste and religious differences and so on. Returning to their villages the sathins began challenging norms in their villages along with groups of women. However, they had to face a number of challenges in the village. Villagers continued to see them with suspicion, as if they were agents of the state and even questioned their morality, due to their unconventional actions.

The author says that currently the program has been cleaned of its radical nature and sathins have the responsibility of monitoring the development targets of the state. This happened because of three things. UNICEF removed its funding. With the dependency on state funding, there was increased pressure to “show” outcomes and development targets. Secondly, there was a incident where sathins organized group demonstrations in protest of the Roop Kanwar’s sati. There was another incident, where the sathins participated in a conference, where they identified themselves as representing a women’s group rather than as state representative. Five sathins were dismissed because of this event. The last two events, especially the dismissal brought to forefront the independent positioning of the sathins with respect to the state and their status within the WDP. It was clear that the state wanted control over the program and marking the end of the radical nature of the program. WDP now increasingly turned to the WID approach of credit and income generating activities. The sathins continued to protest against the state responses and even filed a case against the arbitrary dismissal of the sathins. They won the case in the Supreme Court , after a long legal struggle of almost ten years.

Women in Power? Gender, Caste and the Politics of Local Urban Governance

John, Mary. E. 2007. “Women in Power? Gender, Caste and the Politics of Local Urban Governance.” Economic and Political Weekly 42(39): 3986-3993

In this paper, the author seeks to explore two issues regarding women’s political participation. First, the author explores the criticism that elected women are often proxies for their male relatives. Second, the author examines the notion that a critical mass of women in power will  be beneficial for women. This paper examines women’s political participation in the urban counterpart of Panchayats known as the Municipal Corporations. The 74^th amendment reserves 1/3^rd of the seats for women in urban local bodies.

Data:

The study is based on the Municipal Corporation of Delhi and Bangalore City Corporation and was conducted in 2002-03. The study is based on the experiences and findings of a preliminary study on municipal governance in Delhi and Bangalore. 75 councilors from Delhi and 59 councilors from Bangalore were interviewed for the study, which included 41 women from Delhi and 32 from Bangalore. The councilors were randomly selected from different wards ensuring that all reserved categories were included in the sample.

Findings:

In order to answer the question regarding proxies, the researchers explore how men and women enter politics. The authors find that no man or woman claimed to have entered politics on their own. 18 women (~25%) and 34 men (~56%) owed their entry to a political leader or mentor. The author suggests that for men as well as women, a proxy was the mode of entry into politics. Few men acknowledged the role of family in their political life. Only 4 out of 61 mentioned family. Over 1/3^rd women mentioned their husband as their main source of support while another 25% women mentioned another family member. However around 25% men had other family members in politics and this could have been an added advantage for them.

The authors find that some women do fit the proxy label, but rarely. Another mode of enquiry was to understand why some women did not contest for elections when the seat became dereserved. Many women said that they were withdrawing from the position so that their husbands could contest. Another perspective was that when a woman gets elected, the ward actually gets the services of both the husband and wife. Rather than the proxy argument, it seemed political responsibilities were shared between the husband and the wife, in some cases. There were varying opinions among women councilors. Some preferred working on her own, some criticized the proxy women and some acknowledged reservations as the means by which they could make headway in politics. Thus, the authors find that the proxy label presented a varied spectrum of possibilities – some remained proxies, some shared political responsibilities with their family members and some councilors emerged as strong leaders over the period of five years.

Secondly the authors seek to answer the question, “In  what  ways  do “women” emerge as  a subject within  the  field  of  local  urban politics?” Theoretically scholars have argued for women’s reservation stating reasons of gender justice (women’s  political  presence should  be proportional to  their presence in  society);  arguments  focusing on women’s  interests  (a  sizeable presence of  women  is  necessary for  their  interests  to  be adequately  represented); and  a  resource argument  (women  have specific  qualities that ought to  be part of political  life. Some other scholars have stated the need for looking beyond quotas to address the intersections of gender, class, religion and caste.

The author sought the councilors’ opinions on caste based reservation and reservation for women.  While councilors in Delhi showed an antipathy towards caste based reservations, councilors in Bangalore maintained a political correctness about their responses about caste reservation. Regarding women’s reservations, most councilors were in favor and provided the following reasons. Councilors in Bangalore felt that women needed to be given a chance in politics. Councilors in Delhi put forward the resource argument that women had specific qualities such as sincerity and honesty. Noone put forward any arguments related to women’s interests. The author criticizes the resource argument because it provides legitimacy to similar arguments made about women’s capacity or lack of it to participate in politics.

Very few women brought up gender based discrimination as problems in their daily working. 50% women said that they had disruptions in their home responsibilities. The argument regarding critical mass did not find many takers. Women were often aligned to their political parties or families rather than to ‘women’ as a group. There was no scope for a collective force of women. “The  idea  that  women  share, much  less  cultivate,  a  common identity  as  women  in  the process of becoming local  political leaders  is  thrown  into  serious  doubt.” Thus, neither gender nor caste was playing a collective role in their political roles. Finally the author concludes stating the need for more research and focus on urban local governance structures.

Powerful Women: Does Exposure Reduce Bias

Beaman, Lori, Raghabendra Chattopadhyay, Esther Duflo, Rohini Pande, Petia Topalova. 2009. “Powerful Women: Does Exposure Reduce Bias?” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 124(4): 1497-1540

In this paper, the authors examine whether exposure to female leaders influences public opinion about female leaders, such as taste preferences for male leaders and perceptions about effectiveness of female leaders. To address this question, the authors study village councils in West Bengal India, where one third seats in the Panchayat level were reserved for women. However, reserved seats are rotated across Panchayats and some Panchayats have been reserved once, twice or never. In this study, the authors compare villager attitudes towards hypothetical and actual women leaders across councils (Panchayats) which have been reserved once, twice or never. The authors hypothesize that taste preferences are more deeply held while perceptions about effectiveness may change with more exposure to female leadership.

Hypotheses:

Taste discrimination, conceptualized as higher preference for male leaders remains unchanged with political reservations.

Statistical discrimination, measured as the difference in the evaluation of male and female leader effectiveness will reduce with political reservations.

Data and Methods:

The data for this study come from a survey of 495 villages across 165 Panchayats from a random sample of 5 households per village. The survey was complemented by Implicit Association Tests (IAT) to measure implicit feelings towards male and female leaders. In this, villagers were asked to categorize images of male and female leaders with normative categories of good and bad. To measure gender-occupation stereotypes, villagers were asked to categorize male and female names with leadership and domestic tasks.   This study was methodologically innovative as it sought to use IATs in a low income setting. As an extension of the survey, the authors administered speech and vignette experiments where villagers were asked to listen to a short tape-recorded speech adapted from an actual village meeting, where a male or a female leader responds to a villager’s complaint. Each respondent also heard a vignette where a leader makes a decision in a situation of resource scarcity.

Measures of Voter taste

The survey had explicit taste measures with questions that asked villagers to rate their feelings towards male and female leaders. There were two IATs. One was a categorization task where villagers were asked to match male and female names with good and bad attributes. The second IAT asked villagers to match attributes with male and female politicians.

Measures of Leadership Stereotypes

To examine changes in gender stereotyping of occupations, the IAT task evaluated whether villagers exposed to reservation were less likely to associate women with domestic tasks and men with leadership tasks.

Measures of Leadership effectiveness

This was measured with the help of the vignette task and some survey questions. The leader’s gender was varied randomly for the vignette. Thus, the authors could examine whether the same action was evaluated differently depending on the leader’s gender.  Further survey questions asked villagers to rate their actual leader’s effectiveness.

Findings

The findings are examined in categories of never reserved, once reserved and twice reserved Panchayats to explore whether exposure to women leaders influence villager’s perceptions and biases.

Male villagers rank male leaders higher than female leaders. For female villagers, the difference in rating is smaller but male leaders are ranked higher. This remains the same even after exposure to women leaders.

Both men and women show same gender preference for positive attributes. Male villagers associate positive attributes with men and female villagers attribute positive attributes with women and neither is affected by reservations.

In terms of gender occupation stereotypes, male villagers in never reserved Panchayats were faster in associating women with domestic activities than with leadership activities. Male villager exposure to female leaders reduced the association of a female leader with domestic activities. Thus, the authors conclude that exposure to female leaders lowers the stereotype linking.

Male villagers in never reserved Panchayats rate the hypothetical female leaders to be less effective than the hypothetical male leader. Exposure to female leaders reverses this bias. However evaluations of female villagers do not change with exposure to female leaders. The authors suggest that this is because female villagers have less exposure to local politics.

When villagers were asked to evaluate their actual leaders, female leaders in first reserved GPs scored less than leaders in never reserved GPs in their ability to respond to village needs, general effectiveness and in preparing BPL beneficiaries. However villagers’ ratings of leader effectiveness in twice reserved GPs were statistically indistinguishable from never reserved GPs, where the Sarpanch is usually, a man. This shows that exposure to female leaders influences how villagers evaluate female leader effectiveness.

The authors also find that male leaders do not outperform female leaders, and in fact seem to suggest that female leaders perform better. The authors find that the average number of repairs in or constructions in reserved GPs were higher than in unreserved GPs. Moreover, villagers were seen to have paid lesser bribe in reserved GPs.

Thus, villagers perceive first time female leaders more negatively even though they seem to be performing equal to or better than male leaders. This bias is not seen in twice reserved GPs. Women in first reserved GPs seem to report their gender as a difficult in performing their role.  The authors also find that female leaders invest in women preferred goods.

In conclusion, the authors find that deep rooted biases and social norms are difficult to change but perceptions about female leadership may improve as a result of affirmative action and mandated exposure to female leadership. Exposure to women leaders reduces stereotypes regarding gender roles and changes perceptions about effectiveness of female leaders among male villagers. Moreover, in the recent elections, compared to never reserved Panchayats, almost twice the number of women contested and won seats in unreserved Panchayats, which had reserved seats for women earlier. Thus, the authors argue that affirmative action help remove barriers for women’s political participation.

Making Redistributive Direct Democracy Matter

Gibson, Christopher. 2012. “Making Redistributive Direct Democracy Matter: Development and Women’s Participation in the Gram Sabhas of Kerala, India.” American Sociological Review 77(3): 409-434

In this article the author argues that execution of development schemes in the global south depends on citizen participation. The author argues that women’s participation in Redistributive Direct Democracy Institutions is a significant explanation for development. Drawing from analysis of data from 72 Gram Sabhas in Kerala, India (Gram Sabha is a permanent RDD institution where citizens can directly influence allocation of state benefits) the author demonstrates that women’s participation in the Gram Sabha has significant effects on development outcomes.

Research Question:

The author examines whether women’s participation rates in Gram Sabha explains variations in redistributive development at the local level.

Theoretical Concepts:

The author defines redistributive development as a “as state pro-vision of public goods and services that expand historically marginalized social groups’ basic human capabilities.” Scholars suggest that women in office, left parties in power, civic associations and activists on ground tend to expand redistributive development and activists on the ground. Further, the availability of public funds is also an important requirement for development. RDD institutions have the potential to accommodate the demands of historically marginalized groups by opening decision making to local participation.

In this article, the Gram Sabha is the RDD institution under analysis. GS does four things:

1. By opening development policy making to mass participation
2. By devolving authority to citizens
3. By providing opportunities to lay claim on benefits
4. Discourage officials from ignoring claims

The author theorizes development by considering excludable public goods such as housing and latrines which are individualized needs and are ones that the local government agencies such as the Panchayat have control over.

Data :

The author uses quantitative data from 72 Gram Panchayats across 14 districts in Kerala using stratified random sampling to ensure representation from 14 districts. The author uses 3 sets of measures. First set includes demographic development expenditure and welfare provisions data. Second set includes measures of political participation such as number and gender proportion of Gram Sabha participants as well as gender and political party affiliation of elected Panchayat members between 1996-2000. The third set is the response to a survey administered to 12 Gram Sabha actors, state bureaucrats and politicians from 848 respondents.

Operationalization:

To measure RDD, the author estimated the number of houses and latrines that each Panchayat built in one year (2000). Gram Sabha rate captured the proportion of attendees who were women in all 1999 GSs. There were 8 additional Independent Variables.

1. Electoral Representation

• Left party rule based on left party share
• Fraction of female share among Panchayat members

1. Demand and supply for public expenditure

• Female SES measured by daily average female agricultural wage
• Supply of state expenditure – Amount that GP reported spending in individual beneficiary projects in 2000

1. Separate dimensions of beneficiary targeting

• Beneficiary targeting – proportion spent on individual benefits
• Bureaucratic insulation – Based on the three separate responses from the survey (Two separate questions asking respondents to rate the extent of corruption and misuse of funds and third question asking how likely were citizens to raise questions and demand response from officials)

1. Social Capital

• Female associational activity captured by key informants estimates of local women’s activism
• Civic association membership – Total number of reported members in KSSP and other civic organizations that were politically active but were neither religiously motivated nor formally affiliated with a political party.

Control variables were, total population,  proportion of SC/ST population and urbanization.

Findings:

After controlling for population, SC population share, urbanization and initial conditions, the female GS rate is a strongly positive and statistically significant predictor of subsequent housing and latrine provision. In a multivariate OLS model, a one percent-age point increase in the 1999 female GS rate, on average, predicts state provision of an additional 7.83 houses and latrines in 2000. LDF seat share is not a statistically significant predictor of development. Model 3 finds that women’s seat shares in locally elected government are not a statistically significant predictor of development.

“By contrast, leftist party seat shares, women’s seat shares, women’s associational activism, and three other authoritative explanations in the literature—state capacity, social capital and resource mobilization, and the supply of and demand for development expenditures—all failed to explain variation in local development.”