The effect of women's parliamentary participation on renewable energy policy outcomes

Abstract

Decreasing CO2 emissions, a top priority of climate change mitigation, requires moving away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy. Research shows that women tend to exhibit more knowledge about climate change, environmental concerns, and pro-environmental behaviour than men. Theories linking descriptive and substantive representation suggest that women representatives better represent women citizens’ policy preferences. Therefore, do higher levels of women's parliamentary participation increase renewable energy consumption? A time-series cross-sectional analysis of 100 democracies from 1997 to 2017 provides evidence for such a relationship in both high- and middle-income democracies. Lagged modelling demonstrates that high-income states see more immediate effects while they take longer to materialize in middle-income states. These findings contribute to our growing understanding of women's role in policymaking outside of ‘women's issues’ and offer a means of advancing climate-friendly energy policy.