Are congresswomen more responsive to the public policy demands of female voters?

• Autor(a) principal: Moreira, Natália de Paula
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da USP
• Texto Completo: http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/8/8131/tde-09052016-114959/
• topic: Câmara dos Deputados; Carreira política; House of Representatives; Mulheres; Política pública; Political career; Public policy; Women

This thesis seeks to contribute to the literature by studying the impact of a legislators gender on health and public security policies passed in the Brazilian Congress and whether such policies are aligned with voters preferences. Evidences have shown that women face stronger barriers to being elected as compared to their male counterparts (Lawless 2015; Speck and Mancuso 2014) and they face a complex and demanding electoral playing field when running for re-election (Palmer and Simon, 2010). My hypothesis is that female politicians need to establish their credibility by proposing public policies in masculine areas, such as public security. Once a congresswoman has political experience, as a mayor, state deputy or another office, she risks making policy more aligned with female voter preferences. Using data from a national survey and a low-income voter survey, I analyze whether male and female Brazilian voters differ in the priority they assign to health and security policies. This enables me to predict what effects gender representation should have on health and public security policy choices. Then, I examine the differences in the types of health and public security budget amendments sponsored by male and female legislators. Finally, I analyze the impact of a politicians gender conditional on experience in politics. With these results, I compare the preferences and priorities of male and female voters with the representatives priorities and see if they correspond. Employing logistic regressions, the voter surveys analyses show that female voters do not present different policy preferences than male voters. Moreover, the results of the budget amendments analysis using linear regressions suggest that (i) female deputies do not focus more on health policy than their male counterparts, and (ii) female deputies that are professional politicians allocate less resource for security policy than male professional deputies.