Abstract How do women in parliament shape trade in clean and dirty products? A large body of literature finds that women have stronger preferences for environmental protection than men. I argue that when more women enter parliament, international trade becomes cleaner. One mechanism is by introducing more stringent environmental regulation, which shapes firms’ costs and hence comparative (dis)advantages: Stringent environmental regulation increases costs relatively more for firms producing dirty products, resulting in a comparative disadvantage in global product markets; firms producing clean products gain a comparative advantage. As a consequence, women in parliament make trade cleaner, which has consequences for environmental and distributional outcomes. Leveraging ‘gender quota shocks’ and a variety of country, firm, and product data from European Union (EU) countries, I find support for these arguments. Moreover, examining import flows, I interestingly find no evidence that gender quotas lead to the outsourcing of dirty production. I finally provide suggestive evidence for the mechanism that women’s descriptive representation shapes trade in clean versus dirty products via stricter environmental regulation. These findings enhance the study on the connection between descriptive and substantive representation, introduce a new perspective on trade and environmental politics, and highlight the significance of gendered representation for environmental and distributional outcomes.
Søren Frank Etzerodt (Fri,) studied this question.