Financial Health of Local Governments: A Gender Approach

Abstract

[EN] In recent years, public sector research has developed a line related to women's participation in government and its effect on public finances. In this vein, this paper attempts to empirically analyzethe effect women’s presencein local governments has onmunicipal financial health. For that, we use a sample of the 140 Spanishmunicipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants during the period 2008-2018 and we create four indicators that refer to cash, budgetary and service-level solvency, as well as a global index that represents the municipal financial health.Our empirical results show that municipalities with a female mayor and with higher percentages of women in the council tend to havehigher levels of these ratios. This supports the view that the entrance of women into the traditionally male-dominated public sphere could benefit governments’ financial health.