Crimes Against Women in India: Evaluating the Role of a Gender Representative Police Force

Violence against women in India has gathered considerable attention in recent years with increasing public policy debates on urgent legal reforms. A factor which has perhaps not received enough attention is women’s participation in law enforcement. In the year 2014, women comprised only 6.1% of the police force in India. This paper combines this narrative with the theory of representative bureaucracy which implies better outcomes for a section of society through increased representation in public decision-making bodies. Using state-level annual data from 2001 to 2012, I estimate the difference in effects of female and male police force on arrest outcomes for crimes against women. Results suggest that increasing women at the inspector ranks plays a significantly higher role in arrests for such crimes, compared to increasing male inspectors. I find considerable heterogeneity across different types of crimes against women and states by female literacy levels and degree of urbanization.