Women, Power and Politics: How Party Control of Nominations have Excluded Women from Politics in India Since 1950

While village level quotas in India have brought thousands of women to power at the local level, only about 6 % of the Members of Parliament (MPs) and 4 % of the Members of Legislative Assemblies (MLAs) have been women. Little is known about why and under what circumstances these women have been elected to positions of power. Is the under-represented of women in Indian politics a result of gender bias among voters or the power-dynamics within parties? Are women more competitive once they have gained political experience? This paper is an empirical investigation of the barriers to the entry of women into politics in India since 1950. India provides an excellent case study for barriers for women in politics. The country is known pervasive gender inequality, but has also been a flourishing democracy for 65 years, allowing us to study the patterns of nomination, election and rerunning of women over time. The main limitation for studying female MPs and MLAs has been a lack of access to historical information about political candidates. Exploiting a unique, new dataset of more than 400.000 political candidates in India from 1950 till today, including about 15.000 female candidates, the paper shows that the women that have run for political positions gave had a higher election rate than their male counterparts. Using a regression discontinuity design, the paper also shows that an areas where women won in close elections it was more likely that women were nominated and elected later on. The analysis suggests that party control of nominations rather than voter bias has been the main barrier to women entering politics in India, and that experience with female leadership reduces this barrier.