Essays on the economic, political, and spatial dimensions for gender equality

Abstract

This thesis explores the economic, political and spatial dimensions of women’s participation in the labor force and in political arenas, with a particular focus on the economic and political outcomes, as well as on the spatial diffusion of increasing female political participation worldwide. Chapter 1 analyzes the role of the healthcare sector in job creation within the European Union, more specifically on its capacity to integrate women and migrants into the labor market. This initial chapter uses a multicountry input-output model to assess the impact of health and social care demand on employment across the European Union. The analysis incorporates cross-country interactions and sectoral linkages, while employing Rasmussen coefficients and the hypothetical extraction method to identify key sectors for job creation. This methodology highlights the dual role of the healthcare sector in generating employment and perpetuating earnings disparities, particularly among women. Chapter 2 investigates the causal relationship between women’s political empowerment and air quality improvements in 230 European regions. Regional political and economic indicators, used alongside pollution data, enable a positive causal effect to be identified between increased political representation of women and better air quality outcomes. This is achieved by means of a cross-sectional regression analysis on a novel dataset combining high-resolution air pollutant data with political and economic indicators. Endogeneity is tackled by adopting a two-stage least squares model, partial identification methods and sensitivity analyses to ensure robustness. This study also explores the potential channels through which women’s empowerment affects air quality, such as policy stringency and institutional quality. Finally, Chapter 3 explores the spread of WPE across 142 countries from 1965 to 2023, using a dynamic spatial panel data model to account for cross-country spillovers. This approach employs a hybrid spatial weights matrix that includes geographical, trade, linguistic, migratory, and religious factors. Spatial Bayesian model averaging is used to select the optimal model and connectivity matrix, and heterogeneous effects are also considered. This analysis reveals a significant spillover effect from the women’s political empowerment levels of neighboring countries, as well as pronounced heterogeneity in the transmission.