What Soil Can Tell Us About Sex Deficits

Soil can help explain child sex ratios in rural areas of India, argued Eliana Carranza, Technical Advisor at the World Bank’s Gender Innovation Lab, in this week’s WAPPP seminar, “Soil Endowments, Female Labor Force Participation and the Demographic Deficit of Women in India.”

Sex ratios – defined in the world of demography as the ratio of females to males in a population – are typically split with the number of females and males. Variations in ratio are often visible by age group, but the biggest variation in sex ratios is actually seen via geography. For example, a few countries in the Middle East and South Asia show a distinct and persistent deficit of women, including India.

The World Bank study that Carranza presented was recently published in the American Economic Journal and argues that child sex ratios in rural India can be explained by differences in soil texture. Carranza argued that these ratios are affected by women’s employment opportunities in agriculture, which vary across different kinds of soil.

This is because the soil texture in a certain region determines the depth of land preparation required to produce a crop there. Deep tillage, which reduces the need for labor in female-dominated tasks such as transplanting, fertilizing and weeding, is only possible in loamy soil textures. Therefore, districts with larger fractions of loamy soils exhibit lower rates of female participation in agriculture. The lower demand for female labor reduces the economic value of girls to a household, leading to lower ratios of female to male children.

The study sees a significant effect of soil texture on agricultural workers' opportunities, which disproportionately affects women. There is not the same effect on the overall male population, since men have other types of employment opportunities, while there are no real alternatives available for women in these regions.

The study found that an additional 10 percentage points in the share of female agricultural laborers in the rural work force is estimated to increase the relative number of rural 0-to-6 year olds by 44 girls per 1000 boys. This would bring the sex ration from an average ratio of 925 to 969, which is above the natural outcome for children of that age. The deficit of girls could be erased by a less extreme 5.8 percentage point increase in share of female laborers in rural workforce.

Carranza's policy prescription is relatively simple: provide more economic opportunities specifically for women. Previous studies show that increasing income is not enough to close the gender gap, and neither is creating more employment opportunities overall. In regions dominated by non-equalitarian perceptions regarding the role and value of women, women’s employment opportunities have even greater influence on labor force participation, which in turn affects child sex ratios.

Photo Source: The World Bank

Heroes and Sheroes - Inspiring Women's Political Participation

All of us have heroes. People we’ve seen succeed; whom we want to emulate. When we have something in common with those heroes, it’s even more inspiring: that success feels even more tangible because, “if they can do it, so can I!”

But female political heroes are unfortunately too difficult to come by. Women represent over half of the population in most countries. And when women are involved in policy-making, there are often better education, health, and economic mobility outcomes for the whole society. Yet women make up only 11% of elected political office in India, 18% in the US, and 22% in the UK and China! Getting a few more women---even by quotas---should inspire others to participate too, right?

At today’s WAPPP Seminar, Lakshmi Iyer of Harvard Business School presented her research on “Path Breakers: How Does Women’s Political Participation Respond to Electoral Success?” Professor Iyer and her colleagues look at state level elections in India to see whether simply having women candidates run and succeed affects whether more women will try to run in the future. They crunch a lot of interesting data, and conclude that there is, in fact, an increase in the number of women who run as candidates after they see other women succeed.

But in looking at some of the details, they also find that most of this increase is simply because earlier female candidates run again (rather than new women necessarily getting inspired), and that there’s no impact on whether more women will vote.

If you want to increase and sustain the number of women in higher elected office, simply encouraging quotas---a requirement on the number of women in an elected body---may not be the best way. In India, the nature of democracy may be a stranger impediment: parties tend to select candidates not based on their aptitude or ideology, but by their "winnability"---which often includes association or family connections. Leaving the process to itself, according to Professor Iyer, may not change the situation for generations.

Yet the effect of their presence---even if enforced by quotas---on policy-making may be an important factor. If the mere presence a woman on a governing body can have a tangible influence on how that organization functions and what it does, it might well be worth it, regardless of how she got there.

Pande's new research shows the impact of gender quotas on girls' aspirations in India

To be a young girl in certain Indian villages now is an opportunity --- the 1993 national quota law requiring a third of local village councils to be led by women has changed the way a new generation of girls envision their future. Rohini Pande, Mohammed Kamal Professor of Public Policy, HKS and WAPPP faculty adviser, and colleagues recently published new research analyzing the impact of gender quotas on girls' aspirations in Indian villages.

The paper:
Female Leadership Raises Aspirations and Educational Attainment for Girls: A Policy Experiment in India (with Lori Beaman, Esther Duflo, and Petia Topolava). Sciencexpress DOI: 10.1126/science.1212382, January 12, 2012. Reprint January 25, 2012.


Media coverage:

Female politicians point the way towards equality

Financial Times

As debate rages over the use of gender quotas in the boardroom, an increasing number of countries are introducing them to further women’s representation in the political domain. While some dismiss the quota system as one that clashes with the ideals of the democratic process, there is evidence that these laws help create female role models, and improve educational and professional opportunities for young women.

In India, good things happen when women are in charge

The Globe and Mail
Rohini Pande's research shows that having women on local government dramatically changed the beliefs of young girls about what they can do with their lives.

Gender Quotas Boost Achievement for Girls, New Study Finds

January 12, 2012
By Doug Gavel
Published in the HKS News

Rohini Pande, Mohammed Kamal Professor 

of Public Policy

"Our study shows that, in the Indian context, 
the positive effect of exposure to a female 
leader dominated any possible backlash, 
probably because it gave women a chance 
to demonstrate that they are capable leaders," 
writes Pande.

The use of gender quotas to achieve equal opportunity is a controversial political strategy, but one that seems to be achieving positive results in India. A new research paper co-authored by Harvard Kennedy School Professor Rohini Pande finds that the system designating female leaders for selected village councils in India has resulted in substantive gains for girls in those villages -- both in terms of aspirations and educational outcomes.

"Female Leadership Raises Aspirations and Educational Attainment for Girls: A Policy Experiment in India" is published in the January 12th edition of the journal Science.

In their research the authors analyzed data gleaned from more than 8000 surveys of adolescents and their parents in almost 500 villages, a third of which are randomly selected to reserve a seat for a female leader, called a "Pradhan," on the village council. The data showed that, "compared to villages that were never reserved, the gender gap in aspirations closed by 25% in parents and 32% in adolescents in villages assigned to a female leader for two election cycles."

The authors also conclude that girls raised in villages with a female Pradhan were more likely to score higher in school exams than girls from other villages, while test scores for boys remained roughly the same.

"These results show that laws can help create role models by opening opportunities that were previously unavailable to a group, and this increased opportunity does not diminish the aspirations of those outside the group," the authors argue. "Our study shows that, in the Indian context, the positive effect of exposure to a female leader dominated any possible backlash, probably because it gave women a chance to demonstrate that they are capable leaders. And, perhaps most importantly, our study establishes that the role model effect reaches beyond the realm of aspirations into the concrete, with real educational and time-use impacts."

The study is co-authored by Lori Beaman, Department of Economics, Northwestern University; Esther Duflo, Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Petia Topalova, International Monetary Fund.

Rohini Pande is Mohammed Kamal Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Her research examines how the design of democratic institutions and government regulation affects policy outcomes and citizen well-being, especially in South Asia. She has taught at Yale University, MIT and Columbia.

Why Rising Crime Rates in India May Be a Good Thing - WAPPP Seminar Series

The Woman: Lakshmi Iyer, Associate Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

The Talk: The Power of Political Voice: Women's Political Representation and Crime in India

The Question: Does female leadership affect crime rates in India?

It's not every day that rising crime rates are seen as a good thing. But according to Lakshmi Iyer at Harvard Business School, this statistic may reveal how women in India are gaining better access to the country's justice system.

According to recent research conducted by her and her team, reports of crimes against women have risen as more female politicians have been elected at the local, district and village council levels over the past 2 decades. Rather than an increase in crimes against women, Iyer argues that the rising rate is due to greater reporting of crimes--which is good news for women's access to the justice system in a system ridden by caste, social hierarchy, and persistent gender disparity.

Greater female political representation has meant:

• Better Response from Law Enforcement: a female politician may have more inclination to pursue legislation for women against crimes and violence, and also construct policy based on the needs of her constituents.
• Better Public Perception: interaction with female leaders in India has shown that areas with female leadership have positive views of female leadership
• The Role Model Effect: women may be less tolerant of abuse once they see others in power, and are motivated to take a stand against injustice.

Using crime statistics from 1985-2007, Iyer and her team were able to analyze how crimes against women were reported. The result?

As more females were elected at lower levels of government beginning in 1993, crimes against women increased on the books by 44% - an astounding figure that flabbergasted the team. "We first thought we were wrong, because the number was so big," says Iyer. "We ran the regression again because we were expecting crime rates to decline."The statistic also allowed researchers to glean how attitudes towards women may be changing on the ground.

The police, a traditionally male-dominated institution, may be treating women's crimes more seriously now that women are accompanied by a village counsellor to help them support their claim. This is key in a country where Iyer says attitudes towards crimes against women are still casual. "One policeman told me: 'The husband has a right to beat the wife. in fact, I beat my wife too'."

But some think that education, rather than political representation, will ultimately change attitudes towards women in India. A former chief of police was on hand at the seminar to address the problem of gender disparity. "Many times, if the woman elected to office is illiterate, her husband is ruling by proxy. I believe it is education that will really make the difference for women's progress in India."

*Caption: Pratibha Patil, India's president, makes a peace sign after being elected the first female president of India in 2007. Courtesy Reuters
Effie-Michelle Metallidis is a guest student blogger for the Women and Public Policy Program and Master in Public Policy first-year student at Harvard Kennedy School.