Gendered Representation and Critical Mass: Female Legislative Representation and Social Spending in 22 OECD Countries

• In Event: 173 - Section on Political Sociology Paper Session. Politics and Gender

Abstract

To advance our understanding of the relationship between descriptive and substantive representation of women’s interests, this study first asks if female legislative representation has a positive effect on public spending on health, daycare, and education net the influence of neoliberal economic reforms. Using a Comparative Welfare States Data Set (Brady et al. 2014), the author conducts OLS regression with panel corrected standard errors (PCSE) and finds a significant effect of female legislative representation across policy domains. Effects of three indicators of neoliberalism on three policy domains vary: trade openness has a negative effect on daycare spending, capital openness a positive effect on education, and public ownership a positive effect on health and daycare. The second question of this study is whether there is empirical support for the theory of critical mass. Results from piecewise regression show that there are two empirical points of critical mass although the effects of critical mass are moderate.

Author

• Soon Seok Park, Purdue University