Gloria Steinem had a compelling op-ed in the New York Times this morning that reminded me a lot of one of Ennis’ previous posts about women leaders in rural India. First, some excerpts from “Women Are Never Frontrunners:”

THE woman in question became a lawyer after some years as a community organizer, married a corporate lawyer and is the mother of two little girls, ages 9 and 6. Herself the daughter of a white American mother and a black African father — in this race-conscious country, she is considered black — she served as a state legislator for eight years, and became an inspirational voice for national unity.

Be honest: Do you think this is the biography of someone who could be elected to the United States Senate? After less than one term there, do you believe she could be a viable candidate to head the most powerful nation on earth?

If you answered no to either question, you’re not alone. Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life, whether the question is who must be in the kitchen or who could be in the White House. This country is way down the list of countries electing women and, according to one study, it polarizes gender roles more than the average democracy. [Link]

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p>Of course, there is another equally compelling argument for why the media “gives Clinton a hard time” and why the voters are so quick to discount her considerable experience, to the point of bringing her to tears. Many voters (like the majority in Iowa) may just want a clean break from the past. They don’t care whether Clinton is more capable than Obama or not. They don’t care if she’d be “a better President on day one.” They just want to rid themselves of the Bush/Clinton/Bush/Clinton monarchy and the baggage that comes with it. Perhaps, as Obama says, offering people hope and possibility and having the ability to bring new blood into the broken political process will make up for the experience and insider-Washington-knowledge needed to survive and be an effective President in Washington. There is a lot of credibility behind that argument. Then again, Steinem might also be right:

If the lawyer described above had been just as charismatic but named, say, Achola Obama instead of Barack Obama, her goose would have been cooked long ago. Indeed, neither she nor Hillary Clinton could have used Mr. Obama’s public style — or Bill Clinton’s either — without being considered too emotional by Washington pundits. [Link]

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p>And that brings us to Ennis’s post and the study by Esther Duflo and Petia Topalova about women elected to local office in rural India:

Using opinion surveys and data on local “public goods”–like schools, roads, and water pumps–Duflo and Topalova find that the villages headed by women invested in more services that benefited the entire community than did those with gender-neutral elections, nearly all of which were won by men. But as the opinion polls showed, for all their effectiveness, the women’s governance was literally a thankless effort, with the new leaders getting lower approval ratings than their male counterparts.

Why study the experiences of Indian villagers to understand the costs and benefits of female leadership? Countries that come closest to gender parity in government, like Sweden and Finland, are economically advanced democracies with universal health care, child care, and generous maternity and paternity leave policies. Contrast this with the list of nations with zero women in national legislatures–Kyrgyzstan and Saudi Arabia, for example–and the pattern becomes clear: Women in government are associated with lots of good things… [Link]

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p>Is it any wonder why Clinton might have cried? It is entirely possible that she has a lot in common with a rural Indian woman 🙂

First, the encouraging news from India’s social experiment with female leadership. Duflo and Topalova found that communities with women as pradhans had larger quantities of key public services overall. Nor was quality sacrificed for quantity–facilities in the women-led villages were of at least as high quality on average as in the communities with traditional male leadership. The greatest improvement was in drinking water, the public amenity found to be most valued by women in earlier research (PDF)–with 30 percent more taps and hand pumps in the women-pradhan villages. So while the female pradhans were working for the general good, they were working particularly hard to provide the services valued by their fellow women. They were also less corrupt–villagers with female-headed councils were 25 percent less likely to report having to pay bribes to access basic services like getting ration cards or receiving medical attention.

Now, the bad news. India’s female pradhans were remarkably unappreciated for their efforts. Despite the objective upgrades in village amenities, both men and women living in villages headed by women expressed lower satisfaction with public services. This was true even for water–the level of dissatisfaction was 13 percent higher in women-led communities. In fact, there was even greater dissatisfaction about health facilities, a public service not even controlled by the local village council… [Link]

As of the time of this posting, Clinton is up in the New Hampshire primary with a 40% to 35% lead over Obama (with roughly 30% of the vote counted). If she wins (a huge comeback based on all New Hampshire polls up until today), people are going to ask if the tears were for real, and if that’s what gave her the edge. They are also going to use exit polling data to figure out which group of voters were most responsible for her victory. Even if she loses but comes close, people are still going to ask what caused the “surge.” Maybe, just maybe, the women out there knew that even if the tears were fake, the gender bias may be real.