The Ancient Exploitation

It is surely that directed towards women—and the prevalence of nonprofits working to help women, even in the advanced culture of the United States, testifies to that—and thankfully, in the regions where the exploitation of women is still pronounced, it continues to be challenged, as reported by Harvard Business Weekly.

An excerpt.

“India is a country where many women struggle for survival from the day they are born. Girls in India are less likely to be breastfed than boys, for instance, and less likely to be immunized.

“But India also has the highest number of elected female representatives in the world. A 1993 constitutional amendment meant to broaden the scope and accessibility of democracy called for the creation of directly elected local councils at the district, intermediate, and village levels, and mandated that one-third of all council seats be filled by women. The amendment is an ongoing policy experiment of sorts, on an epic scale.

“As Harvard Business School professor Lakshmi Iyer and her colleagues discovered, it's been producing encouraging results. Their research suggests that disadvantaged or minority groups in India whose members are elected to local governments have not only more of a "political voice" but also more access to and better results from the justice system.

“In the working paper The Power of Political Voice: Women's Political Representation and Crime in India, Iyer, Anandi Mani (University of Warwick), and Prachi Mishra and Petia Topalova (International Monetary Fund) examine the effect that mandated political representation for women has had on crimes against women.”