contrasts to findings from mayoral elections during the 2000s where policy-makers‟ gender did not appear to have any on effect on the size of government, the composition of municipal spending and employment, or actual outcomes such as crime rates (Ferreira and Gyourko 2010). One possible explanation is that city governments come closer to the Downsian model.<sup>3</sup> In Californian school boards where females already hold 45% of elected seats, an anti-incumbent bias was observed whereby adding an additional female (male) increased the likelihood of a male (female) winning the next election (Schwarz 2010).

# **2.2 Gender reservations in the Indian context**

India is characterized by large gender gaps in key human development indicators such as child mortality and malnutrition as well as levels of antenatal coverage, contraceptive use, adolescent fertility, and maternal mortality that are much worse than what is found in countries with similar or even lower levels of per capita income.<sup>4</sup> Discrimination against females originates in marriage practices and caste structures that show little sign of disappearing and may even be reinforced over time (Anderson 2003). Despite high overall growth since the mid-1990s, some studies suggest that gender gaps widened in southern states that enjoyed higher levels of income growth and higher initial levels of female empowerment (e.g. AP, KA, TN), suggesting that economic growth alone may not bring about gender equality (Raabe _et al._ 2009). Persistently high levels of gender inequality are often believed to be reinforced by deficient provision of public goods, e.g. maternal health and peri-natal care for girl children (Bhalotra and Rawlings 2011). To the extent that they can bring about better and more equitable provision of such services, quotas to bring women into positions of power could help to address and eventually overcome such bias.

In 1992, India‟s 73<sup>rd</sup> Constitutional Amendment mandated far-reaching decentralization by establishing a three-tier system of district, block and village-level councils. The _gram panchayat_ (GP) is the lowest tier of local government at village level. It comprises a president ( _pradhan_ or _sarpanch_ ) and council members who are elected from the panchayat‟s wards. Its responsibilities include (i) provision of major public services such as health, education, drinking water, and roads; (ii) setting rates and administering local taxes; (iii) administration, formulation and implementation of local development plans; and (iv) selection of beneficiaries and implementation of social and economic programs established and paid for by the central government. Regular assemblies ( _gram sabhas_ ) by all voters in the GP are meant to monitor performance and increase democratic accountability. To prevent decentralization from reinforcing rather than reducing the power wielded by traditional elites and to counter what was perceived as a legacy of

> 3 Females are found to have higher levels of unobserved political skill, possibly because they had to overcome gender bias to move up in politics. 4 UNDP‟s gender inequality index, based on 2008 data, ranks India 122 out of 138 countries, below Rwanda (83), Lao PDR (88), Egypt (108), Moldova (38), and China (40).

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