Female representation and public spendig : Investigating female representation as a determinant of local expenditure patterns

Sammanfattning: The objective of this thesis is to investigate if the share of women in the municipality board affects the municipalities spending patterns. The study is based on the assumption that women as a group have particular needs, interest and concerns, and when represented, the political decision making will be affected. I used panel data over all 290 municipalities in Sweden over the years 2011, 2015 and 2019, to study the following public spending areas; reception of refugees, elderly care, education and childcare. I conducted a panel regression model with entity and time fixed effects and also added several control variables. The result suggests that there is a significant effect of female representation on spending related to the reception of refugees, but the effect of the other spending areas examined; childcare, education and care of elderly is negative but not significant.