We study whether female-headed local governments in Spain are more likely to engage in gender sensitive policies such as long-term care support, pre-schooling, or work and family-life balancing services. Using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design estimated on the set of mixed electoral races, we find no evidence of female mayors being more likely to implement these policies at the local level. We do find evidence of differences between parties in the probability of implementing these policies, suggesting that the gender of the politician is less important than their partisan or ideological position when it comes to these policy levers. We interpret these results through a model of political selection in which strong parties can impose their agendas on candidates despite primitive differences in policy preferences across genders.

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1 February 2023

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Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 206, pp.371-405, 2023

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DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2022.11.031

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268122004425

This Journal article is published under the centre's Urban programme.