In the APSA Public Scholarship Program, graduate students in political science produce summaries of new research in the American Political Science Review. This piece, written by Komal Preet Kaur, covers the new article by Tanushree Goyal, Princeton University, “Representation from Below: How Women’s Grassroots Party Activism Promotes Equal Political Participation.”
Gender quotas have successfully brought women to positions of political power. But the question remains: how and why do they influence women’s political participation, especially in societies where entrenched patriarchal norms serve as barriers, both within political parties and households? In a recent study published in the American Political Science Review, Tanushree Goyal delves into the world of women politicians in local politics and uncovers their profound impact on reshaping the political landscape, notably in lowering gender-based barriers both within political parties and households.
India presents an ideal backdrop for this study. The country has a long history of gender disparities, with entrenched societal norms and traditional hierarchies that have historically restricted women’s engagement in politics. Although gender discrimination is rampant in every sphere of life, India has made notable strides in promoting women’s political representation through the introduction of gender quotas at the local government level. In India, gender quotas take the form of reserved seats, where half of all positions are randomly assigned to women candidates. Within these reserved seats, only women are eligible to contest elections. Therefore, the resulting winners of election contests are women for these seats.
Goyal’s research spotlights the municipal elections of Delhi, a capital city of India with 23 million residents. Goyal’s research focuses on all the 272 municipal wards in Delhi, with half randomly assigned as reserved for women. She carries out large surveys with 1,664 respondents, 1,243 party activists, and 92 incumbent local politicians. She compares voters’ interest, confidence, and knowledge about politics across both reserved and unreserved seats.
This research has compelling findings: women politicians recruit more women party activists than their male counterparts. Women party activists, in turn, engage in equitable outreach efforts, connecting equitably with both men and women voters during election campaigns. As a result, women voters report higher levels of political knowledge and increased participation in the political process. In this way, gender quotas not only facilitate women’s entry into politics but also bring women voters closer to political discourse.
“This research also dispels the common misconception that women party activists are less effective than their male counterparts.” Goyal’s research challenges the prevailing belief in the role-model effect, which suggests that the presence of women in politics sends powerful signals for people to change their attitudes about women’s role in politics. However, Goyal does not find any evidence in support of the role-model effect. Instead, her work demonstrates that women politicians, through women party activists, can lower barriers to women’s political participation both at the party and household levels without necessarily altering ingrained gender norms. This work suggests that the role-model effect may be limited in a deeply patriarchal setting, where traditional gender roles and norms heavily favor men creating significant challenges for women in asserting their presence and influence.
This research also dispels the common misconception that women party activists are less effective than their male counterparts. For one, women party activists rarely feature in the core party organization and are often relegated to the party’s women’s wings. Moreover, scholarly work on party activists has largely focused on male party activists. Goyal’s findings reveal that women party activists are more successful in reaching out to women voters than male party activists. This finding holds particular relevance in the Indian context, where women’s turnout at the polls now equals that of men, and political parties increasingly recognize the pivotal role of women voters in turning their electoral fortunes.
Thus, this study improves our understanding of the role of gender quotas as well as the implications of women politicians and party activists for politics and society at large. The insights from this work raise many questions for future research. First, they prompt the exploration of whether the same patterns hold for women politicians in rural areas or constituencies reserved for historically disadvantaged groups, such as Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Second, the research underscores the need for further exploration of how discrimination against women, both within political parties and among voters, affects political opportunities. Finally, these findings encourage future scholars to further examine the role and effectiveness of women party activists, particularly in clientelistic settings, where party activists act as brokers and offer favors to individuals in exchange for their political support.
- Komal Preet Kaur is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science, University of Colorado Boulder. Her research focuses on public policies and governance reforms aimed at reducing inequality. Specifically, she explores areas such as electoral quotas, property rights, and social policies. Her dissertation work, which investigates the impact of gender and ethnicity-based electoral quotas on group discrimination and electoral participation, has received the Carrie Chapman Catt Prize for Research on Women and Politics and a grant from the American Political Science Association’s Women, Gender, and Politics Research section. Her work has been published in Political Research Quarterly and Conservation Letters.
- Article details: GOYAL, TANUSHREE. 2023. “Representation from Below: How Women’s Grassroots Party Activism Promotes Equal Political Participation.”, American Political Science Review
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