The Power of Intersectionality: India’s Two-Dimensional Legislative Quotas Reduce Inter-Group Conflict and Discrimination

By Emanne Khan

Quotas that reserve a certain portion of seats in government for disadvantaged groups are widely utilized across the globe. Over half of all countries—135, according to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance—have targeted women for such programs, including China, Australia, South Africa and much of the European Union. Gender quotas aim to increase women’s political power and enable them to take a more active role in legislative decision-making.

India, the world’s largest democracy, also administers a sweeping gender quota system. Since implementing constitutional amendments in 1993, India has reserved a third of elected heads of local village councils for women. Rachel Brulé has studied the effects of India’s political gender quotas extensively, with her 2020 book Women, Power and Property: The Paradox of Gender Equality Laws in India presenting novel evidence that when women leaders fill gatekeeper roles they provide crucial help to female constituents, enabling them to access economic rights, such as property inheritance. 

However, Brulé’s research does not unequivocally endorse gender quotas as a silver bullet that resolves the political and economic oppression of women. She has also found that quotas can generate backlash against women who gain new economic rights with the help of female leaders, as men who traditionally inherit property and parents who rely on women as caregivers contest women’s newfound agency. Other scholars have identified additional counterproductive effects of gender quotas in India: Alexander Lee and Varun Karekurve-Ramachandra of the University of Rochester found constituencies in the state of Delhi that were reserved for women were less likely to elect leaders from marginalized ethnic groups.

In a new working paper with Aliz Tóth, Brulé turns her attention to the question of whether quotas that address multiple forms of oppression improve inter-group relationships relative to one-dimensional mandates based on a single form of descriptive representation, such as gender. In addition to its gender-based quotas, India has implemented quotas that reserve seats in local government for members of Scheduled Tribes, which are recognized by the Constitution of India as Indigenous ethnic groups that have traditionally been geographically and culturally isolated from mainstream Indian society. The overlap of these two types of one-dimensional quotas, those for women and for members of Scheduled Tribes, results in two-dimensional quotas which mandate that women who are members of Scheduled Tribes be elected to head a local council.

Prior to analyzing data from multiple sources, the authors explain their theoretically-grounded hypotheses: “Since social norms are policed through interlocking patriarchal and ethnic norms, one-dimensional quotas fail to eliminate social barriers to inter-group equality and likely spur new resistance,” they write. In contrast, they hypothesize that leaders elected under two-dimensional quotas combining gender and ethnicity would have little incentive to promote traditional hierarchy on either front, as they bear the brunt of discrimination in both dimensions. As a result, these leaders are likely to promote more equitable relations between marginalized and traditionally-advantaged groups.

The nationally representative 2006/9 round of the National Council of Applied Economic Research’s Rural Economic and Demographic Survey served as their primary dataset. It includes information on 36,234 individuals from 8,659 households in 241 rural villages across 17 Indian states. The survey enables the authors to gauge the state of relations across communities as it measures respondents’ evaluations of how easy it is for them to engage publicly with members of another caste. The authors also analyzed attitudes about a foundational social decision: respondents’ willingness to marry a member of another caste.

The authors found that in communities where leaders are elected via two-dimensional quotas, individuals are 10.5 to 11.9 percentage points more likely to find inter-caste interactions easy, compared to one-dimensional quotas for members of Scheduled Tribes only. Additionally, two-dimensional quotas improved willingness to marry across caste by 12.5 percentage points. 

The authors summarize their findings by explaining “one-dimensional quotas exacerbate inter-group conflict, potentially enabling backlash by supporting the idea of identity-based advantage as a one-dimensional, zero-sum game where the advancement of one disadvantaged group such as Scheduled Tribes comes at the expense of all non-Scheduled Tribes.”

Why are two-dimensional quotas more effective at reducing discrimination and caste conflict? The authors conclude that norm change is likely driving the positive effects of two-dimensional quotas. Given intersecting layers of marginalization, women from Scheduled Tribes are incentivized to reduce discrimination and conflict on multiple fronts and often employ innovative mechanisms to do so. 

In terms of political participation, analysis by the authors reveals that female representatives from Scheduled Tribes more effectively promote the acceptability of women’s political participation compared to male Scheduled Tribe members or female representatives from more advantaged castes.

As governments around the world consider how to effectively empower marginalized groups without catalyzing backlash, Brulé and Tóth’s findings serve as testimony to the power of intersectional approaches that place groups who face multiple forms of oppression in positions of power where they can reshape norms in favor of respect for all.

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