In this paper we analyze women as political candidates in a representative democracy. Using 50 years of assembly elections data at the constituency level from the Indian states, we show that women are more likely to contest elections in those constituencies where gender ratio of the electors is...

We document the political participation of women in Indian democracy by comparing the turnout of women voters to men in the state elections from 1962 till 2012. Our analysis reveals striking findings: (1) There is a steady and a sharp decline in the gender bias in voting over time. In...