training and transfer of NREGS wage payments to women’s own accounts increased women’s labor supply and reduced social stigma associated with female work. Effects were concentrated in households with stronger norms against female work and consistent with increased bargaining power (Field _et al._ 2019).

# **2.2 Can political reservation affect females’ labor market outcomes?**

Reservation of village council leadership positions for women and scheduled castes (SCs) or tribes (STs) was introduced in India in 1993 to among others overcome long-standing inequalities and discrimination. The share of seats reserved for women is fixed at the state level and, unlike reservation for SCs,<sup>2</sup> seats to be reserved for women are selected randomly in every election. Female leadership has been shown to change the nature and quality of public goods supplied locally, e.g. by women leaders providing goods such as water and roads preferred by women (Chattopadhyay and Duflo 2004) and establishing role models (Beaman _et al._ 2009). Female leadership reservation is associated with higher rates of breastfeeding and immunization as well as higher child survival (Bhalotra and Clots-Figueras 2014). Children’s exposure to reservation in utero or early in life is associated with improved learning outcomes in primary school (Pathak and Macours 2017).<sup>3</sup> While reservation may trigger male backlash in the short term (Gangadharan _et al._ 2016), it can alter social norms and attitudes in the longer term. Female leadership increases women’s level and quality of political participation, their ability to contribute to public goods, and leaders’ accountability (Deininger _et al._ 2015).<sup>4</sup> Exposure to female leaders acting as role models triggered higher school enrollment by adolescent girls, especially those from poorer and less educated households (O'Connell 2018). It narrowed gender gaps (Beaman _et al._ 2012), improved female labor force participation (Duflo 2005; Iyer _et al._ 2012), and raised educational attainment and aspirations by girls. Changes in beliefs regarding gender roles and greater voice by women are argued to be central reasons for increased survival of higher-birth-order girls where local seats were reserved for women (Kalsi 2017). Enhanced female participation in program oversight, civic engagement, and electoral participation in ‘reserved’ villages all point towards potential complementarities between political and economic empowerment (Deininger _et al._ 2019).

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) has been designed to expand demand for unskilled work, especially by women. Building on the country’s long tradition of food-for-work schemes (Dutta et al _._ 2012; Subbarao 1997), this program guarantees up to 100 days of employment per year to

> 2 Beyond gender, pradhan (village council’s headship) seats can also be reserved for scheduled castes and tribes. As seats are not allocated randomly and evidence suggests that politicians’ incentives to allocate benefits along party lines may blunt such quotas’ effects (Dunning and Nilekani 2013), we focus on female reservation only. For discussion of caste reservation, see (Kaletski and Prakash 2016) and (Chin and Prakash 2011). 3 In Spain, quotas resulted in slightly better electoral results for parties most affected, suggesting that without the quota, party leaders were not maximizing electoral results due to agency problems hindering female representation in political institutions (Casas-Arce and Saiz 2015).

> 4 Similar outcomes are observed in West Bengal (Beaman et al. 2010), South India (Besley et al. 2005) and urban Mumbai (Bhavnani 2009). Length of exposure to women politicians is also linked to more formal sector entrepreneurship (Ghani _et al._ 2014).

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