Powerful Women: Does Exposure Reduce Bias?

Lori Beaman (), Raghabendra Chattopadhyay, Esther Duflo, Rohini Pande and Petia Topalova

No 14198, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We exploit random assignment of gender quotas across Indian village councils to investigate whether having a female chief councillor affects public opinion towards female leaders. Villagers who have never been required to have a female leader prefer male leaders and perceive hypothetical female leaders as less effective than their male counterparts, when stated performance is identical. Exposure to a female leader does not alter villagers' taste preference for male leaders. However, it weakens stereotypes about gender roles in the public and domestic spheres and eliminates the negative bias in how female leaders' effectiveness is perceived among male villagers. Female villagers exhibit less prior bias, but are also less likely to know about or participate in local politics; as a result, their attitudes are largely unaffected. Consistent with our experimental findings, villagers rate their women leaders as less effective when exposed to them for the first, but not second, time. These changes in attitude are electorally meaningful: after 10 years of the quota policy, women are more likely to stand for and win free seats in villages that have been continuously required to have a female chief councillor.

JEL-codes: O1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cwa, nep-dev and nep-exp
Note: POL
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Published as Lori Beaman & Raghabendra Chattopadhyay & Esther Duflo & Rohini Pande & Petia Topalova, 2009. "Powerful Women: Does Exposure Reduce Bias?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 124(4), pages 1497-1540, November.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14198.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Powerful Women: Does Exposure Reduce Bias? (2009)
Working Paper: Powerful Women: Does Exposure Reduce Bias? (2008)
Working Paper: Powerful Women: Does Exposure Reduce Bias? (2008)
Working Paper: Powerful Women: Does Exposure Reduce Bias? (2008)
Working Paper: Powerful Women: Does Exposure Reduce Bias? (2008)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:14198

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14198

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().