Gendered Economic Policy Making: The Case of Public

Parliament is the place where politicians make laws to set the policy direction of countries. Non- involvement of different voices such as gender, race and ethnicity in policy decisions may create an inequality in policy-making. Regarding gender, previous literature suggests that women and men may have different policy preferences and women give more priority to policies related to their traditional roles as care givers to children in the family. Public spending on family allowances is one of the economic policies that plays an important role in helping families for the childcare. This paper contributes to the literature by analyzing the relationship between female political representation and public spending on family allowances as well as within a perspective of critical-mass framework. Overall findings support the fact that when the fraction of female politicians is above a certain critical-mass threshold, there is a significantly different allocation of public spending on family allowances.

议会是政治家制定法律、确立国家政策方向的场所。若政策决策过程中未能纳入性别、种族与族裔等多元声音，可能引发政策制定层面的不平等现象。就性别维度而言，既有研究表明，女性与男性的政策偏好存在显著差异，女性会更为优先关注与自身作为家庭儿童照护者传统角色相关的政策。家庭津贴公共支出是助力家庭开展儿童照护服务的重要经济政策之一。本研究从临界质量框架（critical-mass framework）视角出发，分析女性政治代表性与家庭津贴公共支出之间的关联，为相关学术领域补充了新的研究成果。整体研究结果证实，当女性政治家的占比超过特定临界质量阈值时，家庭津贴公共支出的分配格局会发生显著改变。