The ‘Women’s Representation-Corruption Link’ and Environmentalism: A Cross-National Study

The political science literature continues to demonstrate the significance of the relationship between women’s increased political representation and various environmental outcomes. Yet, unanswered questions remain as to the contexts in which this relationship holds and the mechanisms through which it comes to be. To address this gap, I pay special attention to a characteristic of governance which is under-studied in the literature of women’s representation and climate change outcomes: corruption. A demonstrable scourge on environmental health, corruption has also been linked independently to women’s representation; a growing literature shows that increased women’s representation decreases corruption and that more women are elected in contexts of lower corruption. With this backing in the literature, I ask if women’s impact on environmental outcomes is moderated by states’ level of corruption. In so doing, I first offer theoretical backing for this relationship by drawing on the extant literature, arguing that environments of high corruption restrain, tokenize, and marginalize women representatives, thereby limiting the impact they may have on political outcomes. Conversely, in contexts of lower corruption, women’s unique preferences, which tend to be more environmental, left-leaning, and risk averse than men, are more likely to manifest in positive environmental outcomes. I empirically test the proposed relationship through time-series cross-sectional analyses of over 50 countries across 15 years, and find that in contexts of lower corruption, women’s representation is correlated with better environmental outputs and outcomes; in other words, both their political commitments to environmentalism and resulting environmental measures. These findings help broaden our understanding of the relationship between representation and environmental politics, and suggest that the interaction of both integrity and inclusivity in governments holds one potential key to fighting climate change.