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