Gendered accountability: When and why do women's policy priorities get implemented?

Abstract

Recent decades have seen a surge in women occupying positions of political power. This has been welcomed in part as a means of achieving better policy outcomes for women. We interrogate this proposition, developing a gendered accountability framework to explain when and how female representation promotes the implementation of policies that women prioritize. Our empirical analysis applies this framework to sub-Saharan Africa, home to the largest recent expansion in women's political representation. We find that increased female representation in the legislature is robustly associated with reduced infant and child mortality as well as greater spending on health. Effects are magnified when women are more active in civil society and appear primarily in countries that have gender quotas and proportional electoral systems. Thus, while female representation can lead to improved policy outcomes for women, the process is not automatic and is unlikely to occur absent key institutional and societal conditions.