Institutional Practices, Not Power-Hungry Husbands, Are the Biggest Problem Facing Female Leaders in India

By Emanne Khan

Since 1993, India has experienced two competing dynamics. That year, the national government passed the 74th Constitutional Amendment Act, which includes among its provisions that village councils (panchayats) must reserve no less than one-third of seats for women. While the amendment legally granted women an unprecedented level of political representation, long-standing social norms and cultural practices continue to constrain many Indian women from exercising complete agency both inside and outside the home.

Politics and culture intersect in the idea of the sarpanch-pati, a term that refers to the belief that although women may be elected to prominent positions in panchayats, it is really their husbands who exercise power over local affairs. This belief has reached the highest levels of Indian society, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi calling for an end to sarpanch-pati practices in 2015. Some states even consider the issue of husbands usurping political influence to be serious enough to warrant legislative action: Rajasthan, the third largest state in India, passed a law in 2020 punishing female leaders who allow their husbands to wield power with removal from office.

A new issue of Seminar Magazine dedicated to exploring the political representation of women in India challenges the notion that sarpanch-patism poses the biggest challenge to the ability of female local officials to implement better policies. In an article titled “Are Husbands the Problem?,” Rachel Brulé, Simon Chauchard and Alyssa Heinze argue that the hurdles women face in exercising political power cannot be reduced to a problem of power-hungry husbands assuming their responsibilities. In addition, they argue local government in India is structured in a way that allows gender inequality to persist even after women assume positions of power.

In building their argument, the authors do not suggest that sarpanch-patism is nonexistent. They offer the story of Meena, a 65-year-old woman who became head of a panchayat in the state of Maharashtra. Meena’s husband was a career politician who aspired to lead the panchayat until the seat was reserved for a woman. Barred from eligibility, he thus encouraged his wife to run, and once she was elected, he proceeded to “look after everything” regarding village matters, in Meena’s own words.

However, Meena’s story is far from the norm. According to data the authors collected from over 360 villages in Maharashtra since 2020, 66 percent of the female panchayat leaders interviewed claimed to be the individual “making the most decisions related to the panchayat” within their household. Thus, many of the obstacles that elected women face do not owe to regressive gender norms at home but instead to the broader structure of institutions, including the design of local political councils.

To investigate the causes of women leaders’ disenfranchisement, the authors convened a group meeting in each sampled village between the three most influential members of the local government: the panchayat president, the vice president and the secretary. The purpose of this meeting was to measure which actors exercised the most voice and influence. 

When the authors asked the groups for details about the president’s roles and responsibilities, a question they would expect the president themselves to answer, they found female panchayat presidents were 14 percent less likely than male presidents to speak, even though their husbands were almost always absent from the meeting. Furthermore, female presidents were significantly less likely than their male counterparts to play a central role in a collective decision-making exercise about the village’s development priorities, and more likely to be interrupted when they did.

The results of their extensive research demonstrate that husbands are not the chief actors overriding women’s political influence. Due to a lack of procedural rules spelling out how the process of deciding policy is meant to occur within panchayats, powerful male members of the panchayat, such as the vice president and secretary, can easily silence female presidents. In particular, the authors’ surveys revealed that one quarter of female village presidents stated that they were not the primary decision-maker on the village council. Of this group, only 12 percent specified that their spouse was the main decision-maker, while 33 percent named the secretary and another 35 percent named another member of the panchayat. 

The data suggests that where women struggle to exercise their duties as the chief decision-maker on the panchayat, it is more likely that another member of the panchayat is to blame rather than a woman’s husband. Another mechanism the authors found panchayat members commonly use to disempower women leaders is the practice of pressuring elected women to resign before their term has ended, and then rotating other women on the council into and out of the position for the remainder of the term. As a result, female presidents who are forced out of office are unable to benefit from potential learning effects of holding office for extended periods of time, and thus struggle to accumulate and deploy political power.

Given the numerous obstacles, what can be done to improve the situation of female elected officials who sit on India’s panchayats? The authors discuss one innovation they are in the process of testing experimentally: clarifying the rules of deliberation so that all members of the panchayat are asked to voice their preferences during policymaking. Additionally, securing space for women in other prominent roles on the panchayat beyond just president could reduce the likelihood that women presidents will be silenced by men in subservient bureaucratic positions. Finally, the authors recommend another initiative they are piloting in partnership with Bhumi Purohit and the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) Bharat: connecting first-time female elected officials with more experienced female politicians to build supportive, empowering networks for women who may feel isolated in positions of power.

As the authors illustrate, ambitious husbands are not the biggest problem facing female leaders in India. While husbands do present significant challenges for some women in office, a more systemic problem lies in the structure of local political institutions which enable patriarchal practices to persist despite laws aimed at giving women a political voice.

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