Bureaucratic Resistance Against Female Politicians

Institutional mandates such as quotas have enabled individuals from underrepresented groups to become politicians, yet their effectiveness is routinely questioned. This paper examines how these concerns shape the experiences of one such group, women politicians, vis-à-vis the bureaucracy. Contrary to existing theories which suggest gender biases alone lead to differential treatment of women, I show that bureaucrats’ strategic concerns about women’s capabilities and networks are key to understanding why women are refused assistance from bureaucrats with routine policy-related requests at greater rates than men. Through a survey of bureaucrats, I show that bureaucrats perceive women politicians to have low competence and low mobilization capacity. Using survey data from women politicians in India, I further show that women politicians have fewer upward networks to overcome such discretion. Taken together, this paper presents theoretical and empirical evidence of how career incentives of bureaucrats can shape their gendered treatment of female politicians.