The relationship between welfare states and women’s representation in parliaments hasudbeen of great interest to scholars. However, different strands of the literature on genderudand political representation suggest opposing directions of causality. On the one hand itudis argued that a rise in welfare spending increases women’s representation in parliaments,udbut on the other hand, more women in parliaments is said to expand welfare spending.udThis paper analyses the problem empirically and finds that the lagged values of women’sudparliamentary representation are better predictors of welfare spending than the laggedudvalues of spending are of women’s percent in parliaments. In other words, women makeudthe welfare state and welfare spending does not make female representatives.
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