Dissertation Project

2025 Delhi Election Press Conference for Congress Party

Focusing on political parties as the primary pipeline to electoral representation and as gatekeepers to women’s representation, my dissertation asks two questions: (a) how do political parties define women’s access to political power within the party and (b) how do we facilitate women’s upward mobility within parties and into elected positions? I situate my research in urban India, where women’s representation lingers at a mere 10 percent in state legislatures and parties form the locus of political life. I triangulate between qualitative theory-building, original descriptive and experimental data, and qualitative theory-testing to answer my research questions.