In order to strengthen women’s voices in politics, both research and policies have often focused on the presence of female political representatives. Some political scientists have advocated the theory of symbolic representation by claiming that the presence of female representatives is desirable for its potential in providing role models who have a positive impact on the political engagement of female citizens. This paper tests this claim by exploiting a natural experiment in Rajasthan, India, where the assignment of reserved seats for women in village councils is determined by lottery. Interviews have been conducted with female citizens in both villages with a male and female village council chairperson. Besides variation in current exposure to a female chairperson, I also study villages with both persistent and interrupted exposure to a female chairperson. Moreover, interviews have been conducted with the chairpersons themselves in order to control for women being proxy leaders for their male relatives or more gender sensitive than male leaders. The results show that the presence of female political representatives does not seem to have a positive impact on women’s political interest, discussion, activity, information, efficacy or knowledge. However, female representatives who are proxies for male relatives appear to have a negative impact on women’s political activity. This result demonstrates the importance of making sure that women assigned to reserved seats are the de facto political representatives. If they are not, there is a risk that reserved seats for women are contra productive with regards to the role model argument.
