DO GENDER QUOTAS PRODUCE SPILLOVER EFFECTS? EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM ITALIAN MUNICIPALITIES

Abstract

This paper analyses the spillover effects of gender quotas on women's involvement in politics and the labour market. It uses a rich data set that provides information on all the Italian municipalities characteristics and administrators between 1981 to 2012. In 1993, Italy introduced gender quotas. The law was in force until 1995 when it was abolished because it was declared unconstitutional. Because of the short period covered by the reform, some municipalities never voted under the gender quota system. It allows identifying a treatment and a control group exogenously and estimating the results comparing the two groups and through a Di erence-in-Di erence approach. The results suggest inconsistent evidence of the increased female representation of women in neighbourhood units. Furthermore, there is no consistent evidence of cross-sectoral spillover e ects of gender quotas on the female unemployment rate in the long run. Still, the share of housewives over the total female population aged 15 or older seems to be affected by the reform, even if the effect offset over time. The results are robust to a number of robustness checks, including controlling for northern and southern regions.