Women Political Leaders as Agents of Environmental Change

Seminario de investigación del IIEP
Women Political Leaders as Agents of Environmental Change
Expone | Mariana Viollaz | CEDLAS-IIE-UNLP

Abstract
This paper provides novel rigorous evidence about how female political leaders impact environmental outcomes and climate change policy actions using data from mixed-gender mayoral races in Brazil. We rely on a Regression Discontinuity design that compares municipalities where women narrowly won the election with those where men narrowly won.
This strategy allows us to identify the causal effect of a woman winning the mayoral election. We find that compared to male mayors, female mayors significantly reduce total deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions. Specifically, female-led municipalities experience 6824 hectares less deforestation per mayoral term and a reduction of 3.5 GDP units in annual emissions in municipalities with vegetation typical of the Amazon biome compared to male-led municipalities. We examine potential mechanisms that could explain the positive environmental impact of narrowly electing a female mayor over a male counterpart and find that in Amazon municipalities, female-elected mayors allocate more space to the environment in their government proposals, and are more likely to have an environmental council and invest in environmental initiatives. Differences in the enforcement of environ-mental regulations and the skill level of female and male elected mayors do not explain the results.