What happens when women deal with foreign aid : the case of Sub-Saharan countries

This paper seeks to evaluate whether there is any impact on aid effectiveness when there is a different gender composition of parliaments in recipient countries. The sample observed refers to 40 Sub-Saharan African countries over the period 2007-2019. The findings gained demonstrate that a higher presence of women in parliament leads to improvements in the relationship between aid and growth. When controlling for endogeneity problems that can affect the linkages between aid and growth, these results are confirmed. The channel through which their entry into politics seems to bring benefits to economic growth is the social sector, towards which a large part of foreign aid goes.