Gendered environmental leadership and the rise of biodiversity finance

This paper examines whether gender diversity in environmental governance is associated with biodiversity-finance outcomes across the 27 European Union countries between 2012 and 2023. We distinguish between administrative, ministerial, and legislative dimensions of women's representation and evaluate their relationship with biodiversity-finance volume and intensity using fixed-effects Poisson and fractional-response models. The results provide limited evidence that gender representation alone systematically predicts biodiversity-finance outcomes. Female representation in environmental administrations is negatively associated with biodiversity-finance intensity, while female environment ministers are positively associated with intensity. No robust unconditional relationship is observed for biodiversity-finance volume. However, several conditional patterns emerge. In the later years of the sample, higher female representation in environmental administrations, ministerial positions, and parliamentary environmental committees becomes more strongly associated with biodiversity expenditure. Similarly, the positive association between female ministers and biodiversity-finance outcomes is stronger in countries characterized by higher levels of women's political empowerment. By contrast, threshold analyses provide little evidence of critical-mass effects. Overall, the findings suggest that the relationship between gender diversity and biodiversity finance is conditional on institutional and policy context rather than representation alone. These results contribute to the emerging literature on biodiversity finance by highlighting how governance structures may shape biodiversity-related public spending.