As the Covid pandemic unfolded, there appeared to be a clear trend emerging, with countries led by women seeming to perform much better than those led by men.  New research from Binghamton University, State University of New York explores whether the same applies at a local government level.

The researchers examined the correlation between the gender of the leadership and the adoption of sustainability policies by local governments.  They found that female leaders were 30% more likely to adopt such policies than their male peers.  What’s more, female leaders were also nearly 13% more likely to enact redistributive policies than male leaders.

“There’s a pretty well-documented literature of past research that indicates women and men do look at issues differently,” the researchers say. “I am intrigued that there is this difference in the general population, with women being generally more pro-environment, but that doesn’t translate when they’re in positions of power into greater support for government energy conservation efforts. I’m really interested in why that is, why this area.”

Different priorities

The researchers gathered data from the Local Government Sustainability Practices Survey conducted by the International City/County Management Association in 2015.  The survey was completed by nearly 1,700 local governments across the United States, with the researchers making note of both the gender and the political affiliation of leaders.

Perhaps as expected, Democratic leaders were significantly more likely to adopt social welfare programs and sustainability practices than their Republican peers.

There also appeared to be a strong correlation between the financial health of the municipality and its likelihood of adopting sustainability measures.  This was especially so for larger municipalities, with small communities less likely to adopt such measures.

The size of the municipality also influenced the gender of its leader, with jurisdictions bigger than 100,000 people more likely to have a female leader.  What is less clear if female leaders are more likely to enact sustainable policies or whether jurisdictions that are more likely to support sustainable policies tend to elect female leaders.

“In this next phase of our research, we are going to talk to male and female leaders in places where they have done something positive about the environment and find out how the project came about, what barriers they faced and how they dealt with those challenges,” the researchers explain.