Why women participate less in civic activity: Evidence from Mali∗

Civic engagement fails to foster democratic representation and accountability when women or other marginalized groups face barriers to participation, as they do in many developing countries. Rather than flattening access to participation, a randomly assigned civic education course in Mali widened the gender gap when it increased civic activity among men while decreasing that among women. Qualitative evidence reveals mechanisms by which the information intervention generated perverse consequences for women. In a place where women are traditionally unwelcome actors in the public sphere, the course heightened the salience of civic activity, thus increasing social costs for female participators. Women report implicit and explicit threats of sanctions from male relatives and village elders. The intervention did, however, work to close the gender gap in civic and political knowledge. Together, these findings suggest that information asymmetries constrain civic participation, but information alone cannot overcome discriminatory gender norms – and may even exacerbate them. ∗I am grateful to the National Science Foundation, the International Growth Centre, the Freeman Spogli Institute, and Stanford University for financial support. I thank Jeremy Weinstein, James Fearon, Saumitra Jha, Katherine Casey, Beatriz Magaloni, Bernd Beber, Mariela Szwarcberg, Kristin Michelitch, Amanda Robinson, Eric Kramon, and members of the Midwest Working Group on African Political Economy for comments on earlier drafts. This research would not have been possible without the research assistance of Sidi Zeda and Peter LeFrancois as well as the Malian instructors and enumerators. All errors are my own. †The Bush School of Government & Public Service, Texas A&M University. [email protected].