TY - BOOK ID - 139062157 TI - Gender and Public Goods Provision in Tamil Nadu's Village Governments AU - Gajwani, Kiran AU - Zhang, Xiaobo PY - 2014 PB - Washington, D.C., The World Bank, DB - UniCat KW - Agricultural Knowledge & Information Systems KW - Agriculture KW - Gender KW - Gender & Health KW - Gender & Law KW - Health, Nutrition and Population KW - Local Governance KW - Population Policies KW - Public Goods Provision KW - Rural Development KW - Rural Development Knowledge and Information Systems UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:139062157 AB - Using data from 144 village-level governments in India's Tamil Nadu state, this paper investigates political reservations for women and whether the gender of village government leaders influences the provision of village public goods. A knowledge test of village government presidents and a survey about the interaction between village presidents and higher-level officials reveal that female village government presidents have much lower knowledge of the village government system than do their male counterparts and have significantly less contact with higher-level government officials. Although male and female presidents provide similar amounts of some public goods, there is strong evidence that village governments led by a woman built fewer schools and roads-two public goods that require relatively more contact and coordination with higher-level officials. ER -