Women in Charge

• Author: Rohini Pande and Petia Topalova
• Position: the Mohammed Kamal Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. is a Senior Economist at the IMF and adjunct lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.­

In her opening address to the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995, Aung San Suu Kyi said: “There is an outmoded Burmese proverb still recited by men who wish to deny that women too can play a part in bringing necessary change and progress to their society: ‘The dawn rises only when the rooster crows.’ But Burmese people today are well aware of the scientific reasons behind the rising of dawn and the falling of dusk. And the intelligent rooster surely realizes that it is because dawn comes that it crows and not the other way round.”

The Conference resulted in the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action, compelling governments to enact legislation to include women at all levels of power and decision making, including parliaments.Â

A policy experiment in India did just that, dramatically increasing the political representation of women at the local government level through quotas. We examined this trial and concluded that once women are in charge, they can significantly change public attitudes and dispel the belief that the dawn doesn’t rise unless the rooster crows.Â

Gender gap

Although the World Economic Forum’s 2012 Global Gender Gap Report showed greater equality between the sexes in human capital investments and economic opportunities, female underrepresentation persists in political leadership positions and in the highest-paying jobs. UN Women (2011) reported that in 2011, only 19 percent of parliamentarians worldwide were women, and a woman headed the government in only 19 countries. The numbers are even lower in big business: on the Fortune 500 2012 list, women held 4.2 percent of chief executive officer (CEO) positions (see Chart 1).

Both supply- and demand-side explanations have been offered. Preexisting social norms and gender stereotypes serve to bias bosses and voters against appointing women as leaders (Huddy and Terkildsen, 1993; Eagly and Karau, 2002). Lack of exposure to female leaders, in turn, perpetuates biased perceptions of women’s effectiveness in leadership roles. Women themselves might not believe in their ability to lead, since they rarely see other women succeed in such positions. They may also leave high-power career tracks to have children (Bertrand, Goldin, and Katz, 2010).Â

Today more than a hundred countries have chosen to respond to gender disparities in the political arena by instituting quotas for women, and a nascent movement in Norway has spread to other European countries, instituting quotas for women on corporate boards. Both initiatives have met with controversy. While debate over board membership is mainly about whether quotas will reduce efficiency, debate in the political arena focuses on concerns that quotas for women may actually crowd out other disadvantaged groups and that women’s policy preferences, which may differ from those of men, may lead them to change the status quo, undermining the privileges of some groups.Â

Those who promote quotas see them as having societal benefits that justify some short-run distortions. They hope female leaders will bring about long-term changes in women’s status in society by changing perceptions of their capabilities. The first women who become leaders may also shape parents’ and children’s beliefs about what women can achieve, helping to close the gender gap in other areas of life. Yet we still know very little about how...