Do reservations and quotas help women?

It depends on what kind, and where. The evidence points in different directions depending on the mechanism, and the mechanism matters more than the intent.

In political representation, India’s experience with reserving panchayat seats for women has produced clear results. Studies find that villages with women-led panchayats invested more in drinking water, sanitation, and healthcare — public goods that women tended to prioritise. The representational effect produced real policy change. But the same evidence base documents a countervailing problem: the sarpanch pati phenomenon, where a woman holds the reserved seat in name while her husband exercises the actual authority. The seat is filled. The representation is not.

Labour market quotas tell a different story. Tamil Nadu’s factory rules require that to employ women on night shifts, a factory must ensure women constitute at least two-thirds of the night workforce and number at least ten. The intent was to encourage inclusion. The effect is the opposite. A factory that cannot easily assemble a predominantly female night shift will simply choose not to hire any women at night at all. Instead of making it easier to hire one woman, the rule makes it costly to hire any unless you hire many. Employers respond to that incentive by not hiring women.

The contrast between these two cases suggests a principle. Reservations that open access — creating space where women were previously excluded — can work. Requirements that attach new conditions to every hiring decision tend to raise the cost of inclusion until exclusion becomes the rational response.

The strongest case for intervention is removing explicit barriers. The weakest is adding new ones in the name of protection.