Research

This paper examines whether female councillors influence local government spending priorities in England, a question central to understanding how gender representation shapes policy outcomes. Using electoral data on about 95,000 candidates between 2010 and 2019, merged with financial accounts of 211 local authorities, I estimate the causal impact of female representation on spending patterns. To address endogeneity, I exploit the alphabetical ordering of candidates on ballots, which generates quasi-random variation in electoral success and thus in female representation. The results show that greater female representation increases spending on care-related services, with offsetting reductions in infrastructure and traditional services. These effects are concentrated in councils where women hold more than 30% of seats, consistent with critical mass theory. The findings provide new causal evidence that descriptive representation affects substantive policy outcomes and underscore the role of institutional design in shaping both gender equality and public finance.

We examine the relationship between the gender composition of local councils and domestic abuse in England. Using administrative data on police-reported incidents, we find a positive correlation between female representation in local government and reported domestic abuse rates, consistent with prior empirical studies. However, individual-level survey data suggest that a higher proportion of female councillors leads to a lower probability that a woman has experienced domestic abuse in the past year. Our instrumental variable analysis supports a causal interpretation of this relationship. We also explore possible explanations for these patterns and provide suggestive evidence on potential channels.

In early 2014, China implemented the Two-Child Policy (TCP), relaxing the one-child family planning regulations enforced since the 1980s. While this pronatalist policy has not significantly increased fertility rates, its broader socioeconomic implications, particularly for women, warrant thorough investigation. This study examines the impact of the TCP on labour market outcomes for women who became eligible to have additional children following the policy's implementation, utilising data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) database. Employing a difference-in-differences (DID) framework, this research reveals that eligible women experience a statistically significant wage penalty. Further analysis demonstrates heterogeneous effects across various socioeconomic factors, with young, less educated, and rural eligible women disproportionately bearing the adverse consequences of the policy. The robustness of these findings is confirmed through extensions of the DID framework.