The role of gender in shaping mayoral grant-seeking behaviours

Research suggests that women face anticipated stereotypes and voter penalisations in their pursuit of political office. To overcome these challenges women have to be better than men in terms of their experience, candidate quality, and political work. We test the hypothesis that women politicians exert more effort compared to men by analysing grant applications submitted by towns in Slovakia between 2016 and 2021. We investigate municipalities in a Slovak region where local governments apply for subsidies in two policy areas, one stereotypically feminine and one masculine. We test whether women apply more often for grants in the realm of the feminine policy compared to masculine policy. We find that municipalities led by women mayors are more active than those led by men mayors in the number of grant applications regardless of the area of policy. Our analysis confirms that once in political office, women show higher effort compared to men.