Want to protect the environment? Advocate for women! Analysis of the impact of women on environmental spending

This paper investigates whether gender plays a role in public spending decisions in the environmental field. We consider a sample of 27 European Union countries from 2003 to 2022. Using Ordinary Least Square estimator, we show that a 1 percentage point increase in the share of women in government is associated with a 0.9 percent increase in public environmental spending. this result is robust to the addition of control variables, changes in the variables used to capture environmental spending, the use of alternative estimators, and are not country-specific. Heterogeneity analysis shows that women in senior positions have the largest impact on environmental spending. Contrary to intuition, the main result does not depend on the political party's orientation. It holds true regardless of when women participate in decision-making. When environmental expenditures are categorized, the presence of women increases spending on environmental R&D and water conservation, but reduces spending on waste management.