When is Information Power? An Experiment on Women’s Participation in India

• In Event: Experimental Studies on the Grassroots Participation and Representation of Women

Abstract

Across the developing world, there persists a striking gender gap in political participation and representation. Even after de jure enfranchisement, the barriers to women's political participation seem insurmountable, particularly in places where gender-biased social norms persist. Past work has shown that when women are mobilized into women’s networks, their political participation starkly rises, but even so a large gender gap persist (Prillaman, 2016). In contract, access to resources and civic information has been shown to have perverse effects: Gottlieb (2016) finds that when women and men are jointly provided with civic information in a context with gender-biased social norms, rather than equalize the gender gap in political behavior, women were actually less likely to participate in politics. This paper more deeply explores the link between political information and exposure and women’s political participation, specifically when combined with strong women’s networks. In order to evaluate these mechanisms, I evaluate a field experiment in coordination with the NGO PRADAN that addresses two specific questions: 1) Can providing political information and exposure through gender and politics trainings increase women's political participation? and 2) Can this political training activate social networks to further increase women's political participation and combat prevailing social norms limiting women's role in politics? To do so, I evaluate a randomized control trial to estimate how civics trainings can be leveraged to activate existing women’s networks and stimulate political participation. The experiment randomized a series of civic trainings to 3,375 women across 225 villages in rural India. These gender and politics trainings were implemented over six months and consisted of the provision of information regarding the political process, the rights and entitlements of citizenship, and the under-representation of women in politics. Additionally, these trainings exposed women to the state through visits to political institutions. These trainings were implemented within existing women’s credit associations (SHGs), evaluating the contingent relationship of social networks and political resources. Preliminary evidence suggests that women who received the civics trainings reported substantially higher political participation across the board. These findings amend our existing understanding of the importance of information for political behavior and the underlying roots of prevailing gender gaps in political participation.

Author

• Soledad Artiz Prillaman, Oxford University