Women in Political Bodies as Policymakers

Thushyanthan Baskaran and Zohal Hessami

No 15983, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We investigate how female representation impacts policymaking using the example of child care and new hand-collected data on local council elections in Bavaria. RDD estimations (mixed-gender races for last party-specific council seats) show that an additional female councilor accelerates the expansion of public child care by 40%. We also document an important nonlinearity: an additional woman accelerates the expansion of child care only in councils with few women. Council meeting minutes reveal that women can be effective in councils despite being a non-pivotal minority because they change "the conversation".

Keywords: local councils; political selection; gender composition; child care (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D78 H70 J13 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 101 pages
Date: 2023-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gen, nep-lab and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published - published online in: Review of Economics and Statistics , 24 July 2023

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