Interview: Political reservations for women are the best strategy for long-term change

On Thursday, the Rajya Sabha passed the women’s reservation bill that will set aside 33% of the seats in the Lower House of Parliament and state assemblies for women representatives, the day after the Lok Sabha had done so.

The implementation of the law, though, will take several years. The bill states that the reservation can only be implemented after the delimitation of parliamentary constituencies, redrawing their boundaries based on the census data. There are other drawbacks as well, such as a growing demand for sub-quota within the one-third reservation for women representatives for members of the other backward classes.

But according to economist and scholar Rohini Pande, a policy to reserve seats for women will result in better outcomes for them in the long term. “The only way to make sustained improvements for women is to change deeply embedded norms about what work women are good at, both in the absolute, and relative to men,” Pande told Scroll in an interview. “It’s clear from the evidence we have that political reservation for women in legislatures can do that.”

Given how heavily the odds are stacked against women, Pande, in fact, says she would argue for 50% not just 33% reservation.

Pande is a professor of economics and Director of the Economic Growth Center at Yale University. Her research, over the years, has focussed on female representation in politics, in particular the societal impact of reserving a third of the seats for women in Panchayati Raj Institutions in India.

“Evidence from the reservation of seats in Panchayati Raj Institutions show that prior exposure to a female leader is associated with electoral gains for women,” said Pande. “Prior exposure to a female chief councilor improves perceptions of female leader effectiveness and weakens stereotypes about gender roles in the public and domestic spheres.”

At times, elected women representatives tend to be proxies for more powerful male relatives. But Pande said that may be less of a problem at higher levels of the legislature. “…Just because there’s more press attention and visibility at these levels,” she said. This makes it harder for male relatives of elected women leaders to take their place without being called out publicly.

A large number of countries have implemented different kinds of gender quotas – voluntary party quotas, legislated candidate quotas or reserved seats – in an effort to increase representation of women in legislative bodies. In your opinion, is reserved seats the best way to go for India? What does the experience of such undertakings elsewhere tell us about the impact of significantly increasing the numbers of women in legislative decision making?

Reservation of seats in legislative bodies is definitely the best way to assure representation – though I would argue for 50%, not 33%. Where we see party quotas or candidate quotas, we also see party members manipulating the quotas and the lists, by, for example, putting up female candidates in constituencies that the party is sure to lose, or putting them low on party lists, and we see voters who believe incorrect norms preferring men to equally competent women – so we see a far smaller proportion of elected female representatives than of candidates.

Reservation of seats also helps with one of the most significant problems of contemporary politics, for women; the way that misogynist men, often online and anonymous, relentlessly attack women in power, with abuse reaching from comments about their appearance and relationships to rape threats and death threats. At least, with reserved seats, any woman who steps down as a result of this abuse will be replaced by another woman – and if the abusive men know this, it might also reduce the scale of the abuse.

You studied the impact of the dramatic increase in political representation of women that was facilitated by the 73rd constitutional amendment to reserve 1/3rd seats in Panchayati Raj Institutions for women (subsequently increased to 50% in 20 states). What did you find?

In this work, I and co-authors show that prior exposure to a female leader is associated with electoral gains for women. After 10 years of quotas, women are more likely to stand for, and win, elected positions in councils required to have a female chief councilor in the previous two elections.

We show that prior exposure to a female chief councilor improves perceptions of female leader effectiveness and weakens stereotypes about gender roles in the public and domestic spheres. We also see that quotas narrow the gender gap in aspirations of parents for their children and of children for themselves; in addition, teenage girls spent more time in school and less on household chores.

These are very important outcomes. Long-term, the only way to make sustained improvements for women is to change deeply embedded norms about what work women are good at, both in the absolute, and relative to men. It’s clear from the evidence we have that political reservation for women in legislatures can do that.

A problem that many believe has subverted the purpose of women’s reservation and undermined democracy has been that of ‘pradhan-patis’ or male relatives of the elected women leaders effectively running the office. So much so that in Madhya Pradesh last year, it was reported that husbands, fathers, fathers in laws and brothers of elected women leaders were even taking the oath of office in their place. How prevalent is this? And will this not be an issue in reserved assembly and parliament seats?

Certainly, there are plenty of anecdotes of this kind of subversion happening. Obviously, it’s something that’s very difficult to study formally, and I don’t think anyone has yet managed that.

My sense is that it will be less of a problem at higher levels in the legislature, just because there’s more press attention and visibility at these levels – so it’s harder for male relatives of elected women leaders to take their place without being called out publicly, among a wider public where they won’t have the same influence and ability to silence criticism as a powerful family might have in a village.

I think we also need to recognise that opponents of reservation for women really like these narratives of failure of reservation, and that’s likely one reason where, when they do become public, they’re widely discussed.

You refer to the Indian experiment of reparations for historical wrongs, that of reservation of seats in the legislature for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes as the most radical one by far. How much has mandated representation helped in bettering the lives of these historically disadvantaged communities? On socioeconomic development indices there remains a significant gap between Dalits and other communities, they consistently rank lower than the national average. No Dalit party, barring Mayawati’s BSP [Bahujan Samaj Party] has formed a government in any state. How much have Dalit elected representatives been able to influence policy while they represent political parties that are led and dominated by upper castes and/or OBCs [Other Backward Classes].

When I studied India’s quotas for Scheduled Castes and Tribes, the evidence showed that these quotas increased transfers to these minorities. I agree, though, that there’s a complex tension, within a party system, between elected legislators being required to take a party line to rise in the party, and being able and willing to enact policies that are centred on their own identity.

We often see, for example, that right-wing, authoritarian parties are actually better at promoting women and minorities than their left-wing counterparts – look at, for example, the Tory party in the UK, which has seen three women prime ministers, and one of Indian origin, while the Labour party has been led exclusively by white men.

So there’s sometimes an alignment of interests between ambitious legislators who are prepared to betray the interests of their own group in order to rise within a party, and parties who want to promote minority candidates in the hope that minority voters will conclude, not necessarily correctly, that they might make policy based on identity, not on party lines.

So now, for example, we’re seeing some Muslim politicians joining the BJP. But we see this phenomenon even without quotas. I would also add, that, personally, I would advocate for a constitutional ban on forming parties around ethnic or religious identity – or any identity that an individual can’t change – because, once they exist, they create an incentive for politicians to foment ethnic and religious divisions, in order to divert attention away from the exploitation of the poor by the rich – as we are seeing in India today.

The question that follows, what does existing evidence tell us about whether this quota for women will only meet the requirements of what [American political scientist] Hana Pitkins calls descriptive representation or will this quota also be able to meet the criteria for substantive representation – women being able to influence tangible policy outcomes.

The evidence we have so far is that, overall, a seat reservation policy for women will result in better outcomes for women long-term - in fact, it’s one of the best strategies we have for achieving that, because it results in long-term changes in norms. Obviously, it’s just a promise right now, for at best the parliament after next, not this upcoming election – and the proposal is also an attempt to persuade women to vote for what is, for now, a patriarchal party. A good strategy, right now, would be for other parties to commit to the same quota mechanism – or, even better, to reservation of 50% of seats in legislatures for women.