Electing a woman instead of a man causes an immediate, measurable drop in local crimes against women.
March 26, 2026
Original Paper
Women in Power: Parliamentary Action, Social Attitudes, and Gender-based Crime
SSRN · 6347138
The Takeaway
Beyond just passing different laws, the presence of a female leader shifts the social attitudes of her constituents. This study linked election results to administrative police records, finding that the 'female leader effect' actually reduces the occurrence of gendered crimes in the district during her term.
From the abstract
This paper studies the causal impact of female political representation on legislative behavior, social attitudes, and gender-based crime. Using a regression discontinuity design based on close mixed-gender electoral contests, we compare electorates that narrowly elected female versus male candidates. We link computational text analysis of parliamentary debates, roll-call votes, post-election survey responses, and administrative police records from 2010 to 2022 in Australia. We document three ma