Faculty Research Fellows Lunch with Saad Gulzar

Saad Gulzar: "A field experiment on engaging women voters in India"

 

Women are half the eligible voters in India, yet there is a large gender gap in political engagement: political parties rarely seek to engage women in the political process, and hardly target women directly during electoral campaigns. In November 2017, India’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) sought to mobilize women directly during local municipality elections by contesting a random set of constituencies on women-centric issues. Further, AAP cross-randomized this by using women canvassers to convey campaign messages in their door-to-door campaigns. In this paper, we study the effects of AAP's mobilization attempts on electoral outcomes and political participation by gender.

 

Saad Gulzar is Assistant Professor of Political Science.