Gender and Climate Change: Do Female Parliamentarians Make Difference?

Source: European Journal of Political Economy, 2019

Author(s): Astghik Mavisakalyan and Yashar Tarverdi

Topics: Climate Change, Gender, Governance, Monitoring and Evaluation

This paper investigates whether female political representation in national parliaments influences climate change policy outcomes. Based on data from a large sample of countries, we demonstrate that female representation leads countries to adopt more stringent climate change policies. We exploit a combination of full and partial identification approaches to suggest that this relationship is likely to be causal. Moreover, we show that through its effect on the stringency of climate change policies, there presentation of females in parliament results in lower carbon dioxide emissions. Female political representation may be an under utilized tool for addressing climate change.