How can we improve gender balance in local government? Family-friendly policies and static ambition in England

Women’s representation in European local governments remains stagnant at around one-third of councillors. One explanation for this longstanding gender gap relates to structural barriers blocking the supply of women candidates, including working practices which are not compatible with caring responsibilities. Yet, so far we do not know whether measures governments can implement to remedy this, including reimbursing care expenses and remote working, increase women’s political ambition. To answer this question, the study uses a survey experiment fielded to local councillors in England (N = 534). The survey manipulates exposure to a bundled set of family-friendly policies in a hypothetical council to identify the causal effect of such policies on static political ambition (councillors’ willingness to run for their current level of office), and explores heterogeneous effects by gender. The introduction of family-friendly policies significantly increases women’s, but not men’s, willingness to run for office again. Analysis of open-ended survey responses further reveals that women councillors more frequently brought up the difficulty of balancing care and work with a political role, while men were less likely to mention this. Overall, the study contributes new evidence about the important role that family policies might play in closing gender gaps in political ambition.