Women's Representation and Social Spending: Historical Evidence from Sweden

How does women’s descriptive political representation affect social spending? While previous research has documented that women and men politicians exhibit significant differences in terms of their policy preferences, we know less about the policy changes women bring about once they enter office. Sweden is one of the most gender equal countries in the world as well as a country with well-developed welfare system. By studying how the social welfare system has developed in Sweden from a historical perspective, this paper aims to get a better understanding about the driving forces of this achievement. We use newly collected register data containing a large number of elections in more than 1000 municipalities in the early 20th century Sweden until today, to study the relationship between women entering local politics and social spending in the early and advanced stages of democracy. By focusing on a single country, we can hold a large number of political and institutional factors constant and shed light on how the inclusion of women in early democracy may or may not have contributed to the development of a large and/or women-friendly welfare system.