Gender Representation and Policy Implementation: Is it Women or the Left Wing that Increases the Childcare Supply?

Abstract

Abstract This study investigates the impact of the accumulation of gender representation during the policy implementation stage on the childcare supply expansion. Previous studies faced two key issues: first, they primarily focused on the impact of gender representation during the policy introduction stage, and second, they often lacked sensitivity in distinguishing whether the outcome was driven by partisanship or gender. Using the city-level dataset from western Germany, this study argues that although the effect of female mayors is model dependent, a 10 percentage point increase in the average share of women city councils leads to an increase in the childcare expansion by about 2.5 percentage points. Notably, regardless of left-wing/right-wing positions, women councilors expanded the childcare supply.