Female Legislators and the Power of the Purse: Does Gender Affect Government Spending? A Cross-National Analysis

<p>My dissertation advances the theory of democratic representation by separating descriptive representation from substantive representation. Although there has been a substantial amount of research on the relationship between gender and legislative representation, there are conflicting findings about the activities and effects of female legislators. The outcome variable, government spending, measures substantive representation by analyzing government spending data across several issue areas. The key question is: has the addition of women to national legislatures led to an increase in government spending in women's issue areas? </p> <p> Despite the quantitative nature of the data, I employed a mixed methods approach to identify the causal mechanisms between female legislators and government spending outcomes. I constructed a substantial cross-national, time-series data set, which tracks spending in defense, education, childcare, and maternity/paternity leave spending during a 28 year period. I joined the dependent variable data with measures of the percent of women in the legislature, the presence of a strong, autonomous women's movement, the presence of a state feminist agency, the rate of female labor force participation, while also including additional covariates. Following the statistical analyses, I employed case-studies to illustrate the causal mechanisms within legislative process.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Campus Access Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Political Science

Year

2012

Author dc:creator

• Tison, Jennifer Suzanne

Contributors dc:contributor

• Laura Woliver
• Lee Walker

• Political Science
• Social and Behavioral Sciences
• comparative public policy
• gender and legislators
• government spending.
• Legislative behavior

Statement dc:rights

• © 2012, Jennifer Suzanne Tison

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/1797

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarcommons.sc.edu:etd-2798