Rural Sociology of Village Tree-Planting Committee Membership Quotas and Women's Participation in Woodlot Management in Kenyan Community Forests: A Regression Discontinuity Analysis of Quota Thresholds

Village tree-planting committees in Kenyan community forests operate under membership quotas that reserve a fixed share of seats for women, yet the sociological consequences of crossing those thresholds remain poorly theorised. The design is specified for a running variable defined as the proportion of women on the committee, with the threshold set at the mandated reservation share. Quota compliance generates two distinct mechanisms—descriptive representation and procedural voice—that operate at different distances from the threshold, and that a discontinuity design can separate them. Using the DHS Program indicator 'Family planning messages at community meeting or event' across fifteen African countries (2021–2025; N = 15; mean = 29.733; SD = 17.495; range 6.60 in Mali to 73.40 in Malawi), the paper illustrates the kind of cross-national variation in community-meeting exposure that motivates the design. The contribution is a transferable identification strategy for quota research in rural institutions, not an empirical estimate. The paper concludes that threshold-based designs can clarify when quotas change participation and when they merely change composition.