How Women Mobilize Women Into Politics: A Natural Experiment in India

Abstract

Female representation is expected to increase women’s political participation through demonstration effects. Yet, in low-income patriarchal settings, demonstration effects cannot lower family constraints on women’s mobility, and low political knowledge limits the scope of agency. This paper presents a novel argument that accounts for these political economy constraints. I argue that female representation has mobilization effects. Female politicians simultaneously lower family and party-organization constraints to recruit women as party-activists. Consequently, female-led mobilization puts female party-activists at the helm of ground campaigns, shrinking the gender gap in partisan contact; receiving partisan contact mobilizes women’s political participation. Evidence from the natural experiment of randomized gender quotas in Delhi and data from rep- resentative citizen and elite surveys support this argument. Female representation has spillovers through female-led party building which equalizes recruitment and mobilization - two key functions through which parties perpetuate gender inequality.