Women’s policital participation in village elections in China

Xiaopeng PangRenmin University of ChinaNov.11-12, 2013, New Delhi

International workshop on feminist economics in China and India

Officials in China claim that voting rates in village elections are high.

percent

100%

MOC, website CNSB Yearbook Zhejiang Prov.

As you can see here, if we rely on official statistics, the reported rates are often more than 90%

Is this true? Why is this important?• The political science literature it is generally acknowledged that

even when elections systems in developing countries are imperfect, the process of voting itself can be constructive (Diamond and Myers, 2000).

• In other words, even though village elections in China may not be perfect, the process of voting itself may be a good thing.

• Although there are (true/serious/many) concerns about the effectiveness of elections in many other villages, it is sometimes argued that, since most people are voting, it is still at least a process that is creating “experience with elections”

• In the long run, the “act of voting” will create an electorate that

will be able to gradually begin to participate in the governance of their own communities

Village Elections in China • Village elections started in 1988. Villagers elect their village

leaders one every three years. • Since the Organic Law of Village Committees was adopted in

1998, it has been China’s policy that villagers select the members of the village committee by popular vote .

• The launch of village elections in China has passed its 25th anniversary sine 1988…

• Village elections in China are now into the 7th to 9th round … on average, there has been 8 elections held in the typical village

• BUT, there is a lot of variation. Both negative and positive views have been expressed and written on village elections in China (Tan and Xin, 2007)…

• Despite the progress in holding elections, almost no one is going to claim that they are perfect

• Some leaders are still appointed that.. procedures are poor… many outcomes are suspicious …

But from some measures, there is progress: Villages that “Directly Elect” their

Village Leaders

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1995 to 1997 2002 to 2004

6983

Percent

So, elections seem to be improving.

Changes (gradual) in some election procedures

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60

80

1998-2001 2002-2004

Percent of villages using fixed ballot boxes (vs. “roving ballot boxes”)

And, in fact, elections seem to matter in some villages:

Investment Projects and Elections Village leader directly elected?("Yes"or"No")

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Road Irrigation School

Village leader directly elected ? ("Yes" or "No")

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Road Irrigation School

Yes

Village leader directly elected?("Yes"or"No")

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Road Irrigation School

Yes

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Investment (Thousand Yuan) Village funded investment (Thousand Yuan)

E A E AE A E A E A

E A

Road RoadDrinking Water

Drinking Water

Irri. Irri.

Total investment Investment from village itself

E = leader was elected

A = leader was appointed

The record of voting across China

• Moreover, this lower voting rate is not due to random gaps in the voting procedures. Some of the largest gaps occur in the case of women and migrants and migrant women.

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Total Women Married Women

Young Women

Women Migrants

The actual voting rates

In fact, to our knowledge, an earlier paper that we wrote on a national representative data set may be one of the only papers that have systematically tried to estimate the “real” voting rate … and, in it, we find that voting rates are not so high …

As you can see from this graph, the total voting rate is only about 75%

“Complete participation” (pattern 1111) is actually falling over time

0102030405060708090100

1998-2001 2002-20040102030405060708090100

1998-2001 2002-2004

Percent of voters that: fill out own ballot and put it into ballot box

Young women All Sample

Interestingly:

In contrast

• Nearly 90 percent of men voted. • In other words, there is a nearly 30

percentage point difference between the voting rates of men and women in rural China.

• This gap between the voting rates of men and women is wide, according to comparisons with other developed and developing countries (Norris, Pippa. 2002).

What is an even more fundamental question

• Why is it that women are less involved in the voting processes in their villages?

• The literature tells us many possible reasons: – Education level of rural women is low (Xiang, 2003). – Women often do not have their own sources of

income (Shi, 2009). – Traditional cultural norms (Yang, 2002; Liu, 2001;

Tang, 2007).

There is 1 additional possible factor• The knowledge of women about their rights to vote may be poor

(or absent).

• According to Xiang (2003), women often do not know the rights given by China’s laws to participate in village elections.

• In fact, women also frequently do not have an understanding of their rights in society, in general, and the importance of exercising them.

In short, one possible factor for low voting in China by women may be embodied in the questions:

Do women in China know what their rights are? If they did, would they vote more?

There is also another explanation• It could be that the problem lies in the understanding of

those who run elections—the leadership of the village.

• What is the perception of leaders on the issue of the way women have been exercising their rights to vote?

Duflo (2004) has shown that when women participate more in local governance, the priorities of local leaders change. Beyond studies like that of DuFlo (2004), however, there are few if any studies that examine how much leaders understand about the election laws.

Specific Objectives of My ResearchFirst, we measure the rate at which women in China’s villages actually are exercising their voting rights.

•Second, we seek to understand the reasons why women vote at the rates that they do.

– In particular, we will try to answer two questions: • One: if women are trained in their rights to vote, will their

knowledge of their rights improve and will they more fully exercise those rights?

• Two: If local leaders are trained in the rights of women to vote, will women in their villages more fully exercise their rights to vote?

Methodology

• Experimental Design–Sampling / the Interventions / Data

/ Approach• Quantitative Results• Some Qualitative Findings• Conclusions

Flowchart of the RCT Events Enrollment of villages … we got a copy of all county names in Fujian and Liaoning … randomly chose the counties … we then got a complete list of all townships in the study counties and randomly chose the towns … we then got a listing of

all villages in the sample towns and randomly assigned the villages (Mar. 2009)

Baseline Survey:

--May 2009

Intervention: (after the baseline but before the election)

--May 2009

Evaluation Survey (after the elections)

--Nov.2009

Analysis now

The Intervention• Step 1: Developed Training Material

– Section 1: Facts about women’s voting in rural China—Actual voting rate is lower

– Section 2: The importance of women’s fully exercising their voting rights to themselves and their community development

– Section 3: Women’s rights to vote based on the Organic Law of Village Committee, the Constitution, the regulations/policies issued by the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

– Section 4: How to fully and correctly exercise their voting rights• One version women trainees• One version village leaders

我们告诉妇女：真实投票率才有意义！

• 自己写票• 选自己想选的候选人• 委托别人投票时要正规合理，并且要征求自己的意见

• 自己把票投入票箱

Here is one of the opening charts in the presentation that our trainers gave to each set of trainees

Women’s Training

Leaders’ Training

So now lets look briefly at the Data Collection

Baseline Survey (in both Treatment villages—before any intervention; and

Control villages

Block 1: Knowledge Test– Facts about women voting (based on earlier survey

work in China)– Importance of women voting (in theory/empirically …

based on international literature)– Voting Rights of Women (based on the Organic Law of

Village Committee, the constitution, and related policies issued by MoAC)

– Mechanics of Voting Gave knowledge tests to both women respondents and village leaders

There were 4 blocks in the baseline survey

Knowledge Test

Block 2: Voting history of women• The survey asked: “In last election did you:

Q1a. Mark your ballot yourself?Q1b. If no, were you consulted about your choice?

Q2. Physically place the ballot into the ballot box (or cast your own ballot)?”

• If the answers to Q1 and Q2 were both yes, then we coded the women as:“Fully Exercising Her Voting Rights”

Blocks 3 and 4

• Filled out form that collected characteristics of:– Women (by women, themselves)– Their Family

– Their Village (filled out by village accountant)

Endline Survey

• Implemented after the election in the village

• Exactly the same as the baseline survey– Given to the same women / same village leaders– Four blocks:

• Exam of knowledge• Voting history of women• Characteristics of women and their family• Characteristics of villages

Ningxia

Fujian

Liaoning

Places of the interventions

The Findings

Changes in their Knowledge Test Scores

This is because we normalize the Control Group to ZERO

(changes in the percent of questions answered correctly—relative to the control group)

5.58 5.89

0.99

Based on our results, we see that there is a positive and significant impact from training women on the:

Table 5.Regression Analysis of Change of Test Scores

Dependent Variable: Change of Test Scores (%)

Independent variables (1) (2) (3) (4)

Experiment Arm Dummy Variables

Women’s Training 5.58*** 5.01*** 4.55** 4.40**

(0.003) (0.009) (0.019) (0.024)

Dual Training 5.89*** 5.82*** 5.59*** 5.63***

(0.002) (0.002) (0.004) (0.004)

Leaders’ Training 0.99 0.73 0.51 0.52

(0.594) (0.697) (0.788) (0.784)

Personal Variables NO Yes Yes Yes

Village Variables NO NO Yes Yes

Dummy Province Variables NO NO NO Yes

The regression results are consistent with the descriptive statistics.

Lack of response in Leaders’ Training Group

• Why?– We can not tell for sure ..

• Scores of Knowledge Test of Village Leaders did not change (this may mean that they did not learn / or they did not want to learn)

• Or they were unable /or/ unwilling to teach women about their voting rights and/or mechanics of voting

Change (between baseline and endline) of Women who “Fully Exercise their Voting

Rights”

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Women's Training Group

Dual Training Group

Leaders'Training Group

Control

0

Control Group normalized to ZERO

(in percentage points relative to the control group)

+11.6

+7.1

-0.07

In fact, our intervention may help increase the voting rate of women

Women Dual Leaders’ Control Training Training Training Group Group Group Group

Fingdings in Ningxia• It is important to note that after the training many

of the women did not change their voting behavior.• Ningxia is dominated by Hui ethnic minorities. We

have chosen this autonomous region since it is widely perceived that Ningxia is more a conservative (gender wise) region of China

• However, because we are choosing villages in only one autonomous region, we may be limiting the external validity of our findings.

Summary and Conclusions• Unlike what Ministry of Civil Affairs sources

sometimes suggest, women’s voting rates in China are not all that high

• We show in this paper, however, that there is a way to improve this record …

• By training women of their rights and the mechanics of voting, we can see improvements in women’s knowledge and voting record

Additional findings

• Training village leaders is not enough …

• For whatever reason, it appears as if either the training is falling on deaf ears … or village leaders are unable or unwilling to transmit their newfound knowledge to women …

Summary of the Quantitative Findings and Comparisons

• The interventions—when they trained women directly in their voting rights and on the mechanisms of voting—were successful in raising the knowledge of women.

• The impact of the interventions, however, did not go further in Ningxia Hui Minority Au.

• These results are in contrast to the samples in Fujian and Liaoning (reported in China Quarterly, forthcoming)

But, Training is only 1 of many steps that are going to be needed

• Training only plugs part of the gap …• Unfortunately, qualitative interviews identified

that there were other constraints:– Some women said that they did improve their

knowledge, but, their husbands, families (and neighbors) were not supportive of their newfound rights [cultural norms are still a barrier … what is the policy response to this … hard to say, right?]

– Some women said that they learned … but, in fact, did not care about voting … elections that year were meaningless … so why vote?

Qualitative Discussion• In seeking an explanation about why our results

in Ningxia differed from those in Fujian and Liaoning, we first must admit that we are not able to quantitatively address this with empirical-based analyses.

• Instead, we turn to quantitative analysis. In the quantitative analysis, we listen to the voices of the actors in the field and hear what they have to say– the women themselves; – their families – and those in the community/village leaders.

This section presents observations that are based on approximately more than 50 interviews.

Training, New Things and Learning about Voting

• “This was one of the most exciting days we have had in our village in a long time. Life for women in the village is typically really boring. We never get out. There are no community activities for us. We really appreciate you caring for us.” [C1-T3-V1-R4]

• “After I participated in the training, I learned that women have equal voting rights with those of men. I learned how to vote. Women should exercise their own rights to vote. I now have confidence to vote.” [C2-T3-V3-R9]

Barriers to Action: At Home, in the Village and in the Minds of Women

• Voices about voting inside the home– “Women in our village are very busy in taking care of kids

and doing housework. If a woman wants to do something outside household, not only her husband will against her, but also her mother-in-law.” [C1-T2-V2-R1]

• Voices about voting in the community– “I remembered what you taught me during the training. I

was very encouraged after the training. But, I did not vote because no women voted for themselves in my village. It was because of the way that the election was held. Only men went to vote. If woman went to vote, villagers would laugh at her for showing off.” [C3-T1-V3-R5]

• Voices about voting and the identity of women themselves– “I should listen to my husband, I don’t care about

election in village, of course, I need obey my husband because he is the head of my family. Voting has no relation with me, with women. It is totally my husband’s business. If you give us some cows or sheep, it is my business.” [C2-T3-V1-R6]

So more work is needed • If women’s voting now is important … Goals set up by

the women’s developent program (2011-2020)– More than 30% of village committee members are women. More than

10% of village leaders are women.

we show China is not getting as much out of elections as they could because many people (especially, women) are not really voting (and so they are not gaining experience) …

China, indeed, is facing a real challenge!

Interesting topics for getting more evidence through action research

• How to get more women involved in voting in village elections?

• What can be helpful to have more women village leaders?(Goals set up by the women’s developent program: More than 30% of village committee members are women. More than 10% of village leaders are women)

• What is difference between women-headed villages and men-headed villages, in terms of development of village and in terms of promoting more women involved?

Thank you!