Do women get into less debt? Gendered local political performance in the EU

Abstract

Gender differences in local financial management are, according to empirical grounds, a reality that predetermines differences in the fiscal performance of municipalities led by women and men. The position of women leaders in public administration and their influence on sources of income, the nature of expenses, and the level of indebtedness have been a popular research issue in recent years, but it includes an almost unexplored gender dimension that needs deeper analysis. For this reason, the main aim of the paper is to examine the relationship between women’s representation in local politics (mayor and councilors) and local indebtedness, emphasizing the assumption about observed better fiscal discipline in municipalities led by female local authorities. The econometric estimations based on the panel data approach are conducted on the sample of twenty-seven European Union countries in the period 2011–2021 using the share of female mayors and female local councilors as explanatory variables. Further, we test the effects of the moment of the EU accession and the degree of fiscal decentralization to offer deeper insights into the problem. Results support the assumption of an inverse relationship between female mayors and local indebtedness, while female local councilors do not cause any statistically significant impact on local indebtedness. Other results show that the number of women in local politics and the degree of fiscal decentralization are important to consider when examining this relationship.