Electing Women in Ethnically Divided Societies: Candidates, Campaigns, and Intersectionality in Bihar, India

• Published date: 01 August 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00104140221141838
• Author: Charles Hankla,Sayan Banerjee,Anjali Thomas,Arindam Banerjee
• Date: 01 August 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Comparative Political Studies

2023, Vol. 56(9) 1433–1469

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/00104140221141838

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Electing Women in

Ethnically Divided

Societies: Candidates,

Campaigns, and

Intersectionality in Bihar,

India

Charles Hankla

1

, Sayan Banerjee

2

, Anjali Thomas

3

,

and Arindam Banerjee

4

Abstract

What factors inf‌luence women’s political success in ethnically divided soci-

eties? Using an original survey experiment in the Indian state of Bihar,

supplemented with qualitative interviews, we explore the impact of two

factors—intersecting gender and caste identity, and the interaction of

campaign appeal with voter experiences of caste discrimination—on women

candidates’success in state-level elections. We f‌ind, f‌irst, that women voters

prefer women candidates, and that Scheduled Caste and Muslim voters also

prefer candidates from their in-groups. At the same time, we identify evidence

of intersectional effects, namely, that Muslim women candidates suffer from a

disadvantage vis-a-vis women candidates from other backgrounds. We also

show that women voters prefer candidates who offer security, especially

when the candidates are women. Finally, we demonstrate that personal

experience with caste discrimination increases support for women

1

Department of Political Science, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA

2

University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

3

Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

4

Policy and Development Advisory Group, New Delhi, India

Corresponding Author:

Charles Hankla, Department of Political Science, Georgia State University, 38 Peachtree Center

Ave, Suite 1020, Atlanta, GA 30302, USA.

Email: chankla@gsu.edu

candidates. These results indicate that voters see women leaders as well-

placed to ameliorate their security vulnerabilities.

Keywords

elections, public opinion and voting behavior, gender, sexuality, and politics,

subnational politics, India, survey experiment

Introduction

What factors inf‌luence women’s political success in ethnically divided so-

cieties?

1

Answering this question is vital because, as we know from previous

research, women’s political participation is a fundamental contributor to

gender equality (Childs & Lovenduski, 2013,O’Connell, 2018,Iyer & Mani,

2019). Indeed, the increased presence of elected women is critical to im-

proving government responsiveness on gender issues and to ensuring the

robust design and implementation of welfare measures pertaining to women

and children. Moreover, women’s political engagement is associated with a

wide variety of positive developmental outcomes, including reduced cor-

ruption, better health outcomes, and improved educational opportunities

(Chattopadhyay & Duf‌lo, 2004,Clots-Figueras, 2012,Esarey Schwindt-

Bayer, 2019). Perhaps the United Nations, in naming gender equality as

one of its 17 sustainable development goals, said it best: “Empowering

women and promoting gender equality is crucial to accelerating sustainable

development. Ending all forms of discrimination against women and girls is

not only a basic human right, but it also has a multiplier effect across all other

development areas.”

2

Improving our knowledge in this area is also critical because research has

demonstrated that female politicians, in the aggregate, behave differently in

off‌ice from their male counterparts (Chattopadhyay & Duf‌lo, 2004,Clots-

Figueras, 2012,Esarey Schwindt-Bayer, 2019). Much of this literature has

concentrated on the established democracies of the developed world, but

recent years have seen a clear uptick in studies tackling these questions in

developing countries. The f‌indings are mostly clear—that more women in

off‌ice translates into more public goods, less corruption, and more attention to

traditional “women’s”concerns (see Buch, 2010,Baskaran et al. 2018).

With all of this in mind, it is understandable that the bulk of prior research

on gender and politics examines the causes for women’s underrepresentation

in off‌ice. We contribute to this literature by focusing on ethnically diverse

democracies of the kind found in many lower- and middle-income countries.

In these complex contexts, where the impact of gender is inevitably mediated

by intersecting identities and institutions, we ask why some women candidates

1434 Comparative Political Studies 56(9)

are successful while others are not. Existing research has begun to explore this

territory (e.g., Clayton et. al., 2020;Goyal, 2020;Jensenius, 2016), but much

remains unknown.

Our key contribution is to shed light on how the campaign appeals and

intersecting identities of women candidates mix with voter characteristics and

experiences to shape political support. We believe that, until scholars better

comprehend the multifaceted ways in which voters react to women candi-

dates, our understanding of when and how women ultimately win electoral

off‌ices will remain limited. We are among the f‌irst to adopt a large-N survey

experiment concerned specif‌ically with elections for an Indian state legislative

assembly to investigate voter support for women candidates (but see Goyal,

2020). Indeed, the use of survey experiments to explore gender and politics in

the South Asian context is in its infancy, as shown in Schwarz et al.’s (2022)

meta-analysis.

We explore two interrelated factors which mediate the success of women

candidates. The f‌irst of these arises directly from prevailing social structures,

namely, the intersecting identities of women candidates themselves and how

these interact with the intersecting identities of their voters. We begin by

asking whether the burdens of lower caste status fall disproportionally on

women candidates. We also investigate how the gender and caste of voters

mixes with the gender and caste of candidates in inf‌luencing decisions at the

ballot box, anticipating that voters will prefer candidates who share their

intersecting identities.

The second factor that we explore foregrounds campaign appeal and the

personal experiences of voters, examining how they interact with the above-

mentioned candidate characteristics. Campaign appeal, of course, is at least to

some extent under a candidate’s control and can be used strategically to

augment her chances of electoral success. In this part of the paper, we draw on

the literature in American politics and investigate whether women are likely to

be more successful with stereotypically “feminine”electoral appeals to de-

velopment and public goods rather than “masculine”appeals to security.

We ask f‌inally whether citizens who are more exposed to caste discrim-

ination will be more interested in candidates making security related vote

appeals and less likely to support a woman. We anticipate that women will be

at a disadvantage among voters with a history of caste discrimination. In other

words, we expect that reduced political opportunities for women can be added

to the many doleful consequences of ethnic hierarchies and tensions.

Across these two topical areas, our research is tied together by a focus on

the determinants of women candidates’success, not ignoring gender but

seeing it as a characteristic with complex implications that interacts with other

aspects of identity and with elements of the political environment. Consid-

ering these questions together has the benef‌it of allowing us to combine the

three factors—campaign appeal, intersecting identity, and voter experience

Hankla et al. 1435