TY  - JOUR
AU  - Chattopadhyay,Raghabendra
AU  - Duflo,Esther
TI  - Women as Policy Makers: Evidence from a India-Wide Randomized Policy Experiment
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 8615
PY  - 2001
Y2  - December 2001
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8615
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8615.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Raghabendra Chattopadhyay
Indian Institute of Management Calcutta
Diamond Harbour Road
Joka, Kolkata 700104 West Bengal INDIA
E-Mail: rc@iimcal.ac.in

Esther Duflo
Department of Economics
MIT, E52-252G
50 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA 02142
Tel: 617/258-7013
Fax: 617/253-6915
E-Mail: eduflo@mit.edu
AB  - This paper uses political reservations for women in India to study the impact of women's leadership on policy decisions.  In 1998, one third of all leadership positions of Village Councils in West Bengal were randomly selected to be reserved for a woman: in these councils only women could be elected to the position of head.  Village Councils are responsible for the provision on many local public good in rural areas.  Using a data set we collected on 165 Village Councils, we compare the type of public goods provided in reserved and unreserved Villages Councils.  We show that women invest more in infrastructure that is directly relevant to the needs of rural women (water, fuel, and roads), while men invest more in education.  Women are more likely to participate in the policy-making process if the leader of their village council is a woman.
ER  -