Political empowerment and marital practices

Despite decades of reform, early marriage and dowry remain pervasive in rural India. This paper examines whether women’s political representation shifts these practices. I develop a two-period model in which households choose daughters’ marriage timing and dowry, facing social penalties for non-marriage. Female leaders, by expanding women’s economic opportunities, increase the value of daughters and delay marriage. When social penalties are high, delays also raise dowry demands. I test this using exogenous variation from India’s 1992 constitutional amendment, which reserved one-third of village council (pradhan) seats for women. Retrospective data from a representative rural survey show that exposure to female pradhans delays marriage by 1.22 years and increases dowry by 68%. A 29% rise in female labor force participation partly explains the delay. Dowry increases are concentrated in patriarchal states, where penalties for non-marriage are most severe. The findings highlight both the potential and the limits of political empowerment in transforming gender norms under binding social constraints.