Gender and public goods provision in Tamil Nadu's village governments

Kiran Gajwani and Xiaobo Zhang

No 6854, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: Using data from 144 village-level governments in India's Tamil Nadu state, this paper investigates political reservations for women and whether the gender of village government leaders influences the provision of village public goods. A knowledge test of village government presidents and a survey about the interaction between village presidents and higher-level officials reveal that female village government presidents have much lower knowledge of the village government system than do their male counterparts and have significantly less contact with higher-level government officials. Although male and female presidents provide similar amounts of some public goods, there is strong evidence that village governments led by a woman built fewer schools and roads—two public goods that require relatively more contact and coordination with higher-level officials.

Keywords: Population Policies; Gender and Health; Agricultural Knowledge and Information Systems; Gender and Law; Rural Development Knowledge&Information Systems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-05-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-dev and nep-pbe
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Gender and Public Goods Provision in Tamil Nadu's Village Governments (2015)
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