Research and development expenditure gap: does women’s political empowerment matter?

ABSTRACT

Sustained economic growth has been high on the list of priorities of many developed and developing nations, and the importance of new technology to sustained economic growth has long been recognized in the literature. Despite the extent of this literature and the importance of innovation to economic outcomes, surprisingly little is known about the effect of women’s political empowerment in the research sector. This study proposes filling this gap by examining the effect of women’s political empowerment on research and development expenditure. Using data from 66 developed and developing countries and system GMM estimation, we show that women’s political empowerment has exerted, on average, a positive effect on research and development investment. Moreover, further study shows that women's level of participation in civil society has the largest effect, followed by women’s civil liberties. By analyzing these underlying transmission channels, we find that this effect is partly due to the positive effects of women's political empowerment on the accumulation of human capital and on institutional quality, which in turn improve the level of spending on research and development. Based on these results, economic policy implications are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Women’s political empowerment
• research and development
• institutions
• human capital

JEL:

• O10
• O3
• O43
• J24

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The UNESCO Institute for Statistics reports that women accounted for less than one-third (28.8%) of scientifc R&D employees across the world in 2016 (Xie et al. 2020). However, women can contribute substantially in scientifc R&D and high-tech industries. Literature has provided strong evidence that female population is an untapped resource for firm's innovations, and the investigation of women's role in R&D investment is timely and crucial.

2 In her highly publicized 2001 report titled Engendering Development through Gender Equality in Rights, Resources, and Voice.

3 We perform the estimations using the Stata module xtabond2 according to Roodman (2009b).

4 Available at http://data.uis.unesco.org/#. Data on R&D expenditure per capita is also available from this database.

5 Women’s civil liberties combine four elements identified in the related literature, including the freedom of movement index, the freedom from forced labor index, and women’s access to justice. The women’s civil society participation index combines three elements: women’s freedom of discussion, participation in civil society organizations, and representation in the ranks of journalists. The women’s political participation index combines women’s legislative attendance and the distribution of political power by sex.

6 Globally, civil society has increased substantially with an explosion of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and social movements of varying sizes and causes. Women’s participation and influence in these organizations and movements have risen as women have become more educated and as they have entered the formal work force (Wyndow, Li, and Mattes 2013). This widening of the informal political space in civil society creates an important link between female empowerment and R&D investment. To participate effectively in political decision-making, women must be present in sufficient numbers in formal political positions. However, in many countries, women do not enjoy an equal presence in formal politics. Moreover, according to Sundström et al. (2017), the index of women's participation in civil society is more closely related to the other two indices, while the correlation between the civil liberties and political participation indices is weaker.

7 the civil liberties index includes women's domestic freedom of movement, absence of forced labor, property rights and access to justice