Jan Stuhler discussion of: Women in politics during COVID.

This article by Natalia Danzer, Sebastian Garcia-Torres, Max Steinhardt, and Luca Stella examines whether female politicians make different decisions compared to their male counterparts. The authors investigate whether school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic were less frequent in countries where women had more influence on policy. They analyze data on school closures and female representation across 28 European countries and conduct a textual analysis of German parliamentary records. The study finds that a higher representation of women in politics is associated with a reduction in the share of school closures. However, the authors acknowledge the limitations of their research design and caution against drawing definitive conclusions. They also suggest that future research could explore the impact of female representation on mitigating the inequality exacerbated by school closures. [Extracted from the article]