"Women in parliament and fiscal decentralization"

Abstract

"This study explores the impact of women’s participation in parliament on fiscal decentralization, measured by the ratios of subnational governments’ tax revenue and spending to the general government. We employ a difference-in-differences research design on a global sample of 83 countries from 1997 to 2020 and leverage gender quota legislation as a source of exogenous variation in the proportion of women in parliament. The analysis indicates that gender quota policy is a plausible instrument for estimating the causal impact of female empowerment on fiscal decentralization. Our estimated results show that countries adopting gender quotas in parliament have, on average, a 2.4 to 2.6%-point increase in tax and total revenue decentralization compared to those that do not. The findings suggest that increased female participation in parliament drives greater fiscal decentralization and not only improves gender equality but also enhances the potential for greater decentralization and stronger local democracy. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2025."