Elena Grinza (University of Turin)
Enrique Carreras, Alessandro Manello and Noemi Oggero
This paper estimates the effect of gender quotas in local politics on female entrepreneurship. We exploit the introduction of a 2012 Italian reform mandating female candidate representation in municipal elections for municipalities above 5,000 inhabitants, and implement a difference-in-differences event-study design comparing municipalities first exposed to the reform with never-treated municipalities, restricting attention to a narrow population window around the binding threshold. Using a balanced panel of 607 municipalities observed from 2007 to 2022, we find that quota exposure increases female entrepreneurship by approximately 2–3%. The effect is concentrated in regions with lower baseline gender equality, consistent with a catch-up mechanism whereby female political visibility matters most where it is most novel. We find no evidence that the effect operates through increased municipal spending on childcare or social-care services, ruling out the most natural policy channels. The evidence is instead broadly consistent with a role-model interpretation: the increased visibility of women in local political leadership appears to shift the perceived feasibility of entrepreneurial entry among women in gender-unequal environments.