Vilken påverkan har kvinnlig politisk representation för utfallet av klimatpolitiken? En studie av hur andelen kvinnliga ledamöter påverkar svenska kommuners utsläpp av växthusgaser

Abstract

During recent decades several studies have investigated how different social roles and socialization processes between women and men affects our attitudes, values and priorities to environmental problems. Many empirical studies among the general public, indicates that women tend to show a greater environmental concern than men, because of women’s different health- safety- and risk perception. Even though the results are well established among the general public, when investigating if elected women in public offices tend to express a higher environmental concern, than do men, the results are not that clear. By using a dataset covering all the 290 municipalities in Sweden, this study aims to investigate if there is any correlation between the amount of female representatives in the municipality and the amount of emissions of CO2e per capita. The hypothesis is that women in public offices tend to express a higher environmental concern and thereby make different decisions concerning climate strategies witch in the long could generate decreased CO2e emissions. The results from the multivariate regressions models reveals that the expected negative effect of female representatives in the municipality on the CO2e per capita emissions is not statistical significant. If we want to better understand the correlation between gender, environment and governance, further research is needed.