Politics as a Male Domain and Empowerment in India

India is the world’s largest democracy, yet female presence in India’s state and national legislatures has consistently remained under 10 percent. In contrast, female representation in Iocal village councils has risen dramatically in the last twenty years. A constitutional amendment instituted in 1993 both devolved significant powers to village councils and instituted a quota system that required that one-third of village council leader positions be reserved for women. While the mandatory nature of the quota system implied that it led to an immediate increase in descriptive representation, our work with co-authors demonstrates that it also increased substantive representation.