Health and the Political Agency of Women

By Sonia Bhalotra, Irma Clots-Figueras. Social Science Research Network, 2011

273 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We investigate whether politician gender influences policy outcomes in India. We focus upon antenatal and postnatal public health provision since the costs of poor services in this domain are disproportionately borne by women. Accounting for potential endogeneity of politician gender and the sample composition of births, we find that a one standard deviation increase in women's political representation results in a 1.5 percentage point reduction in neonatal mortality. Women politicians are more likely to build public health facilities and encourage antenatal care, institutional delivery and immunization. The results are topical given that a bill proposing quotas for women in state assemblies is currently pending in the Indian Parliament.

Subfields: Gender Studies, Political Science and International Relations

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6152ac9388054f5107e9a3e44415d8f43b685a70

Citations in the corpus

• The Impact of Gender Inequality on Economic Performance in Developing Countries (2018, unknown): “In particular, papers by Chatthopadyai and Duflo (2004), Bhalotra and Clots-Figueras (2014) and Duflo (2012 , ha e fou d e ide e that o e s political empowerment promotes the provision of public goods, better human capital, and lower child mortality.”