Political trust - still dependent on gender distribution in equal contexts? A quantitative study of the female representation - political trust relationship in Swedish local governments

Abstract

Representative democracy is essential to many political systems and constitutes values that citizens agree with. Still, political bodies around the globe fail to ensure a representative gender composition that reflects the population. A lack of research conducted within this field hinders our understanding of how female representation impacts political trust within gender equal contexts. The results of such research could facilitate the promotion of legitimacy in countries like Sweden. This paper aims to bring clarity to the so far unexplored relationship between the number of female councilors and political trust in Swedish local governments. To compare local governments, multivariate regression analyses on the local level are conducted using observational data and official statistics. Results show that female representation and political trust are correlated when measuring it for women, although no findings imply a similar relationship for men or for the whole population. Potential mediators of corruption and welfare priority are being tested, however, no significant results were found. The findings thus imply a correlation between the share of female councilors and political trust, though this relationship seems to be conditioned by gender.