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<DIV align=center><FONT face="Times New Roman"><STRONG><FONT size=4>Is
<EM>She</EM> Well Served If <EM>He’s</EM> in Charge?</FONT><FONT
size=2></FONT><BR></STRONG><FONT size=4></FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV align=left><FONT face="Times New Roman"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV align=left><FONT face="Times New Roman">December 14, 2005<BR>Adapted from
Understanding Capitalism: Competition, Command, and Change, 3rd Edition by
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV align=left><FONT face="Times New Roman">Samuel Bowles, Richard Edwards, and
Frank Roosevelt, 2005</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman"></FONT> </DIV><FONT size=2>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Women are underrepresented in politics
around the world. For example, in 2000 less than one-seventh of members of the
world’s national parliamentary bodies (such as the U.S. Senate and House of
Representatives) were women. But does this affect the policies adopted? Does the
underrepresentation of women in the legislatures of the world result in men’s
interests being favored?<BR> </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Maybe it does not matter. If elected
political leaders simply implement the wishes of the electorate, then the sex of
the person elected would not matter. Of course, women might be more likely to be
elected in states where the electorate favored policies that women tend to
support. So there would be a correlation between the sex of political leaders
and the policies they implement. But according to this view, the sex of the
leader would not have any causal importance; men or women elected from the same
electorate would do the same thing. <BR>
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>India, the world’s most populous
democracy, provides a laboratory for studying whether women’s
underrepresentation in politics matters for policy. In 1993 the Indian
constitution was amended to require that women be the heads of not less than a
third of each state’s local government councils. In many states the villages
that were to be required to elect a woman as pradhan (as the council heads are
called) were selected randomly: the first village, the fourth, the seventh, and
every third village thereafter were selected from a list of all villages in the
state.<BR> </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>A detailed study of 261 villages in the
states of West Bengal and Rajasthan investigated the ways in which policies have
been affected (or not affected) in the villages with newly elected female
pradhans. All of the villages studied are poor and lack public services. Tap
water is available in only 1 in 10 of the Rajasthan villages and 1 one in 20 of
the West Bengal villages. Public health facilities are available in less than
one-tenth of the villages in West Bengal and fewer than half of the villages in
Rajasthan.<BR> </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>The researchers studied the kinds of
issues raised by men and women in the meetings of the councils. In both states
women complained more frequently than men about the lack of tap water. This is
not surprising: wherever tap water is lacking, it is the women who have to carry
water, often over quite long distances, in pots on their heads. In West Bengal,
where women do most of the paid work of road maintenance, women complained more
often than men about the condition of the roads. In Rajasthan, where road
maintenance is shared between men and women, men often have to travel in search
of work. Since men in that state could count on at least half of the road
maintanence jobs, they disproportionately favored road
improvements.<BR> </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>The councils with newly elected female
pradhans adopted policies in line with the interests of women. In both West
Bengal and Rajasthan they invested more in the provision of water than did the
villages that were not selected to have a woman pradhan. In West Bengal the
councils headed by female pradhans invested more in roads, while in Rajasthan
less was invested in road improvements. <BR>
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>The effects of India’s 1993
constitutional amendment thus present us with some good news about democracy:
who gets elected does make a difference. However, since women occupy few top
political positions in most countries (including the U.S.), the news from India
may not be so good. If the lessons of India’s experiment hold for other
countries, women’s interests in most nations are less well served than are
men’s.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Source: Raghabendra Chattopadhyay and
Esther Duflo, “Women as Policy Makers: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in
India” (forthcoming in Econometrica).</FONT></DIV>
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