The relationship between female and younger legislative representation and performance on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) *

Type Article
Date 2023-05
Language English
Author(s) Amanuma NobueORCID1, Zusman Eric1, 2, Langlet DewiORCID3
Affiliation(s) 1 : Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), Hayama 240-0115, Japan
2 : National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES), Tsukuba 305-8506, Japan
3 : Evolution, Cell Biology, and Symbiosis Unit, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST), 1919-1 Tancha, Onna-son, Kunigami-gun, Okinawa 904-0495, Japan
Source Environmental Research Letters (1748-9326) (Iop Publishing Ltd), 2023-05 , Vol. 18 , N. 5 , P. 054018 (14p.)
DOI 10.1088/1748-9326/acca96
WOS© Times Cited 1
Keyword(s) sustainable development goals (SDGs), gender, age, democracy, legislature
Abstract

Though the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were crafted through an inclusive process, research on the relationship between greater female or younger legislative representation and SDG performance has been lacking. This article employs a linear mixed effects modeling approach to shed light on this relationship. Controlling for economic and democracy levels and population, the modeling reveals a positive correlation between female and youth legislative representation and SDG performance. Additional analyses, however, suggest the strength of the relationships with female and youth legislative representation vary between the socioeconomic and environmental SDGs. Female and youth representation are strongly correlated with the socioeconomic SDG index; they improve the fit of the model for the environmental SDG index. This result may stem from a tendency in developed countries to trade off the environmental SDGs for the socioeconomic SDGs. It may also imply that greater legislative representation is not sufficient to overcome constraints in energy and consumption and production systems that often lead to those trade-offs. Rather bringing women and younger people into legislatures may need to be combined with institutional and policy reforms that turn socioeconomic and environmental trade-offs into synergies.

Licence CC-BY
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Publisher's official version 14 1 MB Open access
Supplementary data 1 31 KB Open access
Supplementary data 2 1 134 KB Open access
Supplementary data 3 940 KB Open access
Supplementary data 4 51 KB Open access
Supplementary data 5 17 KB Open access
Supplementary data 6 15 KB Open access
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