Does the gender dissimilarity of female mayors with their political government team affect municipalities’ budgets? Evidence from Spain

Abstract

ABSTRACT Recent research has considered whether the growing presence of women in political institutions has affected public budgets. This study takes a different gender perspective. The aim is to assess how gender dissimilarity between female mayors and their government teams can affect municipal budgetary policies. We use data from Spanish municipalities with more than 20,000 inhabitants in the period from 2004 to 2018, a dynamic regression model and take into account the possible moderating effect of ideology. Our main findings are that gender dissimilarity of female mayors increased current social spending and reduced nonsocial spending in line with female gender preferences, while it decreased tax revenues. However, when we analyze only the years of economic growth, we observe that the gender dissimilarity of female mayors increased tax revenue in accordance with their gender preferences. We also see that the interaction between right-wing ideology and the dissimilarity of female mayors substantially and significantly accentuated the decrease in nonsocial spending. We confirm our findings in different population segments.