Spanning the ideological spectrum: Women’s political representation and spending on family work policies

Abstract What causes increased spending on family work policies? The empirical record suggests that increasing women’s representation leads to an increase in welfare spending when the representational increase reflects a legislative shift to the Left. Here, we argue that family work policy is an issue that spans the ideological spectrum, with women on the Left and Right more likely than their male counterparts to prioritize spending on policies that directly enable women’s presence in the formal labor force. The adoption of a gender quota that applies only in larger Italian municipalities enables us to causally evaluate whether greater women’s political representation translates into more spending on the provision of preschool education. Our findings support the argument that women’s descriptive representation can lead directly to women’s substantive representation, particularly when we focus on a policy area – in this case, pre-primary education – with shared implications for women across the political spectrum.