Women’s Representation & the Long Arm of Resistance: Refusal to Care for Parents

• In Event: Unintended Consequences of Reforms for Gender Equality

Abstract

Can enforcement of India’s radical reforms for gender-equitable property inheritance advance social equality by catalyzing meaningful reorganization of familial responsibilities? I consider the impact of quotas that enable enforcement of women’s rights in a crucial domain: property. I leverage exogenously set electoral quotas–reservations–for women as heads of government in India. Reservations enable clean identification of the impact of representation on enforcement of reform, and its impact on a reciprocal obligation: care for elder parents. Where quotas make women’s rights to ancestral property enforceable, they may enable daughters to substitute for sons as care-givers for aging parents, legitimizing women’s new claims to own, cultivate, and reside on ancestral land. In contrast, if representation that makes enforcement of women’s property rights credible also increases familial conflict, quotas may have unintended consequences: reducing sons’ traditional willingness to care for elder parents without increasing the ability of daughters to provide this support. Indeed, I find strong evidence of backlash to gender-equalizing inheritance reform. Sons—as traditional care providers–are 29-36 percentage points less likely to support parents where daughters can enforce equal rights to property inheritance. Daughters are unable to substitute for sons post-reform, and new inheritance rights do not yet give daughters leverage to provide alternative forms of care (choosing marriages closer to home). This analysis suggests that reform intended to improve the value of daughters actually weakens familial organization, reducing the perceived rewards and increasing the risks of bearing daughters.

Author

• Rachel E. Brule, Boston University