Men co-opt women’s political authority in gender quota elections

When does an elected woman actually get to govern? According to new research, top-down reforms in India may promise elected seats to women, but patriarchal home lives often undermine their authority and hollow out the representation women need. 

Clayman Institute Faculty Research Fellow Soledad Artiz Prillaman, assistant professor of political science, recently presented on her research in progress, “Family politics: Collective governance and women's political representation in rural India,” examining the outcomes of gender quotas in village leadership. 

India has one of the largest gender-based quota systems for elected governance. Since 1992, for example, one third of elected seats at the level of Sarpanch (similar to a mayor or city council chair) have been reserved for women. Sarpanches administer social welfare programs, liaise with village citizens, and take on other leadership duties. Gendered seat reservations rotate randomly among villages each cycle. Outcomes of this quota have varied across regions, particularly according to intensity of patriarchal culture and level of prosperity, but Prillaman’s research in Gujarat and Madya Pradesh shows that male relatives regularly take over representative power intended for women.

Prillaman’s research included surveys and interviews with male and female Sarpanches, their families, and their constituents that built holistic portraits of how power works in varied villages. She enhanced self-reported data through “behavioral audits” in which researchers approached citizens to ask for help finding the person in charge—when did citizens direct researchers to the elected female leader, and when did they send researchers to speak to her male relative? Prillaman and her co-authors found that many villages with female leaders in reserved seats sent researchers to talk to her male relative instead.

In surveys, Prillaman found that many women ran for Sarpanch with the full expectation of holding real power and serving their community, only to find their role diminished.

On one hand, the Sarpanch position is often a family affair. High election and administrative costs, many duties, and limited financial support leave many male and female Sarpanches leaning on family members to share their work and authority to some extent. However, almost all male Sarpanches report having “final decision-making authority” in their position. Only 40 percent of female Sarpanches report the same, mostly pointing to male relatives as the key decision makers. 

Elected women in Gujarat and Madya Pradesh are highly dissatisfied with their eroded power. In surveys, Prillaman found that many women ran for Sarpanch with the full expectation of holding real power and serving their community, only to find their role diminished. According to Prillaman, surveyed women had “very high rates of belief that [they] could do the job,” ranking themselves highly in problem solving, leadership, and persistence. “One of the things that came out a lot in the qualitative data is that women want the authority that is being constrained from them. This isn’t just a tacit sort of compliance, but [they experience] a more active coercion...[women Sarpanches] feel they got a bait and switch.” Through factors like higher access to money, employment, and education, male relatives co-opted female Sarpanch power after the fact.

Despite their thwarted access to the political representation promised to them, women in the Sarpanch position still faced more intense voter expectations. “As much as the Indian media says that these quotas are leading to anti-meritocratic selection...we find the exact opposite to be true in that these women are—even when they are after the fact coerced and suppressed by men in their family—they are held to high standards at the ballot box,” especially in terms of educational level. Some families, her subjects reported, would selectively educate one female relative to run for Sarpanch with the intention of using her seat to give power to a father-in-law or husband. Further, many women—that 40 percent with final say—do successfully access their elected powers, especially those with leadership experience in “self-help” microcredit groups.

These findings also highlight how, in Prillaman’s words, “women don’t have perfect agency in all spaces and all decisions,” as citizens or even as elected representatives. Ensuring women’s political representation at the level of government falls short of gender justice when patriarchal attitudes and family structures persist at the level of the home.