Rithika Kumar @rithikakumar.bsky.social · 04/04/2025The validation exercise provides evidence in favor of our measure as a robust predictor of proxy status. However, the disproportionate role played by male family members in female reserved village councils (vis a vis unreserved councils) is striking. 120
Rithika Kumar @rithikakumar.bsky.social · 04/04/2025Using a phone measure can possibly overestimate proxy status. So, in a subset of villages we correlate the phone and citizen measures. We find that citizens were significantly more likely to correctly name their female mukhiya if she also responded to our phone survey herself. 110
Rithika Kumar @rithikakumar.bsky.social · 04/04/2025We also find interesting heterogenous effects by state. As expected, female politicians are significantly less likely to be proxies in Maharastra than Bihar. Remember, not only is MH more developed, it also implanted quotas about 9 years before Bihar. 110
Rithika Kumar @rithikakumar.bsky.social · 04/04/2025Positive takeaway: There is significant variation in proxy status i.e.not all women are proxies! The ability of women to be de facto leaders varies significantly. However, 30 years since quotas were implemented, there is a consistent gender gap in proxy status across our measures 110
Rithika Kumar @rithikakumar.bsky.social · 04/04/2025During our fieldwork we saw husbands sitting in the female mukhiya's chair and even campaign posters for women with their husband photos (see below). Beyond these anecdotes, how widespread are proxy leaders? We develop & validate a measure of proxy leadership to address this 110
Rithika Kumar @rithikakumar.bsky.social · 04/04/2025📣📣Excited to share a new working paper with @priyadarshi-amar.bsky.social and Apurva Bamezai. We develop and validate a phone-based measure to assess the magnitude of 'proxy' female politicians in gender-reserved villages in India. Full paper: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... 182
Rithika Kumar @rithikakumar.bsky.social · 20/12/2024This paper is about 35 pages but was written while sipping chai across multiple continents – in coffee shops, shady hotel rooms and expansive corn fields. 130
Rithika Kumar @rithikakumar.bsky.social · 20/12/2024I’m new here & thought I'd share a snippet of my work! In this working paper I use a face-to-face survey exp, an original survey and a panel to show that the male migration disrupts the household status quo by creating the routine absence of men leading to the feminization of political engagement. 1112