Are Women Better Politicians? Discrimination, Gender Quotas, and Electoral Accountability

Gender quotas have been instrumental in addressing the political underrepresentation of women, and there is growing evidence that politician gender may significantly affect public policy. Yet the sources of these gender differences have not been examined from an electoral accountability perspective, nor has the role of having a quota system in place. Using novel data on constituent evaluations of municipal councilors in Mumbai, India—where reserved-seat gender quotas are assigned by lottery—we develop and estimate an accountability model in which male incumbents face probabilistic term limits. We find that female councilors significantly outperform their male counterparts, but reserved-seat quotas have countervailing selection and discipline effects. Due to tastebased discrimination by voters, counterfactual experiments reveal that gender quotas are indispensable to ensure women are not politically underrepresented. However, the latter can be achieved while improving voter welfare by mitigating the perverse incentives of term limits.