Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Lost in Representation? Feminist identity Economics and Women's Agency in India's Local Governments

Lost in Representation? Feminist identity Economics and Women's Agency in India's Local... In India, since 1992, quotas for women in local councils are a key policy mechanism to secure gender equality in political participation and foster rural development. Affirmative action measures were expected to particularly enhance women's agency regarding decisions on decentralized service delivery. However, to date, this potentially transformative reform to the local government system has produced mixed results. This study updates identity economics with intersectional and institutional theories to shed light on the agency of elected women representatives (EWRs) in different federal states of India. The findings show that institutions, including social norms, entail specific identity costs that reinforce stereotyped accounts on women's political agency. Additional policy measures are required to address the incurred costs and render quotas for women effective. The analysis illustrates that an identity economics perspective, grounded in feminist thought, can yield valuable insights for investigating women's agency and for designing gender-sensitive policies. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Feminist Economics Taylor & Francis

Lost in Representation? Feminist identity Economics and Women's Agency in India's Local Governments

Mueller, Ulrike
Feminist Economics , Volume 22 (1): 25 – Jan 2, 2016
Download PDF
25 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/taylor-francis/lost-in-representation-feminist-identity-economics-and-women-apos-s-IZ9c7VRLxi

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Copyright
© 2015 IAFFE
ISSN
1466-4372
eISSN
1354-5701
DOI
10.1080/13545701.2015.1086810
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

In India, since 1992, quotas for women in local councils are a key policy mechanism to secure gender equality in political participation and foster rural development. Affirmative action measures were expected to particularly enhance women's agency regarding decisions on decentralized service delivery. However, to date, this potentially transformative reform to the local government system has produced mixed results. This study updates identity economics with intersectional and institutional theories to shed light on the agency of elected women representatives (EWRs) in different federal states of India. The findings show that institutions, including social norms, entail specific identity costs that reinforce stereotyped accounts on women's political agency. Additional policy measures are required to address the incurred costs and render quotas for women effective. The analysis illustrates that an identity economics perspective, grounded in feminist thought, can yield valuable insights for investigating women's agency and for designing gender-sensitive policies.

Journal

Feminist Economics – Taylor & Francis

Published: Jan 2, 2016

Keywords: Affirmative action; agency; gender analysis; institutional analysis; intersectionality; development; D01; H11; R58

References

  • On the Floor and Behind the Veil: The Excluded in the Panchayati Raj in Haryana
  • Economics and Identity
  • Identity and Schooling: Some Lessons for the Economics of Education
  • Identity and the Economics of Organizations
  • Tokenism or Agency? The Impact of Women's Reservations on Village Democracies in South India
  • Impact of Political Reservations in West Bengal Local Governments on Anti-poverty Targeting
  • Gender Myths that Instrumentalise Women: A View from the Indian Frontline
  • Powerful Women: Does Exposure Reduce Bias?
  • The Dashing Ladies of the Shiv Sena
  • Political Selection and the Quality of Government: Evidence from South India
  • The Complexities and Potential of Theorizing Gender, Caste, Race, and Class
  • Increasing Participation in Democratic Institutions Through Decentralization: Empowering Women and Scheduled Castes and Tribes Through Panchayat Raj in Rural India
  • Identity, Gender, and Subjective Well-Being
  • Comparing Political Institutions: Revealing the Gendered ‘Logic of Appropriateness.’
  • Empowerment of Women Panchayat Members: Learning from Kerala (India)
  • Women as Policy Makers: Evidence from a Randomized Policy Experiment in India
  • Why are Some Women Politically Active? The Household, Public Space, and Political Participation in India
  • Toward a New Vision: Race, Class, and Gender as Categories of Analysis and Connection
  • Democratizing Democracy: Feminist Perspectives
  • Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color
  • Mobility Towards Work and Politics for Women in Kerala State, India: A View from the Histories of Gender and Space
  • Conducting a Critical Interpretive Synthesis of the Literature on Access to Healthcare by Vulnerable Groups
  • Why Political Reservations?
  • Power, Patronage and Politics: A Study of Two Panchayat Elections in the North Indian State of Uttar Pradesh
  • On Kinship Structure, Female Autonomy, and Demographic Behavior in India
  • Labor Markets as Gendered Institutions: Equality, Efficiency, and Empowerment Issues
  • Gender and Economic Sociology
  • Governance Reforms and Rural Women in India: What Types of Women Citizens are Produced By the Will to Empower?
  • Rationality and Interpretation: Parliamentary Elections in Early Stuart England
  • Empowering Women in Villages: All-Women Village Councils in Maharashtra, India
  • Democratic Mobilisation through Quotas: Experiences in India and Germany
  • Political Cleaners: Women as the New Anti-Corruption Force?
  • Towards Equality: Report of the Committee on the Status of Women in India
  • Plea to Retain Seats Reserved for Women in Same Constituencies
  • Is Gender like Ethnicity? The Political Representation of Identity Groups
  • Engendering Local Democracy: The Impact of Quotas for Women in India's Panchayats
  • The Power of TV: Cable Television and Women's Status in India
  • Dis/Empowering Political Subjects: The Production of ‘Failed' Elected Women Representatives in India
  • Expanding Horizons: Can Women's Support Groups Diversify Peer Networks in Rural India?
  • Women in Panchayati Raj Institutions: A Case Study of Chittorgarh District Council
  • Beyond Supply and Demand: A Feminist-institutionalist Theory of Candidate Selection
  • Gender Quotas and Models of Political Citizenship
  • Gender Quotas, the Politics of Presence, and the Feminist Project: What Does the Indian Experience Tell Us?
  • Who Knows Best What the People Want: Women or Men? A Study of Political Representation in India
  • Should Blacks Represent Blacks and Women Represent Women? A Contingent ‘Yes.’
  • New Modes of Violence: The Backlash Against Women in the Panchayat System
  • Gendered Subjects, State and Participatory Spaces: The Politics of Domesticating Participation
  • Paradigm Shift: From Rational Choice to Perspective
  • Conceptual Issues in Institutional Economics: Clarifying the Fluidity of Rules
  • Are Quotas a Good Idea? The Indian Experience with Reserved Seats for Women
  • Sociology, Economics, and Gender: Can Knowledge of the Past Contribute to a Better Future?
  • Exploring Gender Inflections within Panchayati Raj Institutions: Women's Politicization in Andhra Pradesh
  • Sex, Laws, and Inequality: What India Can Teach the United States
  • Institutional Change from within the Informal Sector in Indian Rural Labour Relations
  • The Determinants of Gender Equity in India: Examining Dyson and Moore's Thesis with New Data
  • Deliberative Democracy and the Politics of Redistribution: The Case of the Indian Panchayats
  • Understanding Institutional Change: Fast-Moving and Slow-Moving Institutions
  • Multiple Identities, Multiple Discrimination: A Critical Review
  • Towards a Politics of Collective Empowerment: Learning from Hill Women in Rural Uttarakhand, India
  • Dynamics of Inclusion and Exclusion in Uttar Pradesh
  • Investing in Women is Smart
  • Local Governance and Women's Quota Reservations in India: Against the Notion of Proxies
  • Engendering Governance: A Preliminary Enquiry into Formal and Informal Institutions
  • Understanding Grassroots Power and Excluded Communities in Kerala
  • Purposeful Sampling in Qualitative Research Synthesis
  • Gender Norms as Asymmetric Institutions: A Case Study of Yoruba Women in Nigeria
  • Women in the Panchayati Raj: Grassroots Democracy in India