article · Art and Society
Elected officials often shape public spending according to individual priorities when policy commitments cannot be guaranteed. An analysis of data from 126 countries evaluates how the proportion of women in national parliaments influences budget allocations across multiple categories of public expenditure using system generalised method of moments estimation. The findings demonstrate that higher female representation in parliament leads to increased state spending on education, health, and general government consumption. Conversely, a higher presence of female legislators corresponds with reductions in military budgets and allocations directed towards research and development. Overall, the composition of national budgets reflects distinct shifts in spending priorities linked directly to the gender balance of elected representatives.
Understanding how parliamentary composition affects national budgets helps citizens and policymakers anticipate shifts in public funding. This work shows that increasing the share of women in legislative bodies significantly alters national resource allocation, driving more investment toward social sectors such as health and education while reducing commitments to defence and research.
The abstract provides empirical insights into public policy and government budgeting, but it does not indicate a commercial application pathway or technology transfer opportunity.
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The individual preferences of the elected may influence the decomposition of public spending since policy commitment is not always feasible. This paper investigates if the proportion of female representation in parliament affects the composition of government spending. To attain this objective, we analysed the effect of female representation in parliament on preferences expressed by the proportion of each and every component of government expenditure using a system-GMM estimation technique with data from 126 countries of the world. Our results revile that, women representation in parliament increases expenditure on education, government consumption and health expenditures and on the other hand, female representation in parliament decreases military as well as research and development expenditures.
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DOI: 10.63593/as.2709-9830.2025.05.001
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