Local governments, gender balance and service delivery performance

Previous research has examined how gender within local governments affects the relationship between municipal services and costs, using role congruence theory as a framework for understanding leadership competence. Drawing on arguments from social self-categorization theory, our study complements previous research by analyzing whether gender balance within these governments affects this relationship. From a binary categorization, considering the potential heterogeneity arising from the mayor's gender and the political ideology, our research analyzes whether greater gender balance within local government improves municipal performance. The results of this study, which were derived from regressions on corrected efficiencies obtained from a data envelopment analysis of 102 large Spanish municipalities with populations exceeding 50,000 inhabitants in the 2022 fiscal year, indicate that greater gender balance within the municipal government team leads to higher performance in service delivery when a female mayor is in office. The services' performance is also improved by the interaction between right-wing female mayors and gender diversity within government.