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For a sample of Central and Eastern European countries, characterized by historically high female labor force participation and currently low fertility rates, we analyze whether fathers’ increased involvement in the family (housework and childcare) has the potential of increasing both fertility and maternal employment. Using two waves of the Generations and Gender Survey, we show that a higher fathers’ involvement in the family increases the subsequent likelihood that the mother has a second child and works full-time. Men’s fertility and work decisions are instead unrelated to mothers’ housework and childcare. We also show that fathers’ involvement in housework plays a more important role than involvement in childcare. The role of fathers’ involvement in housework is confirmed when we consider women who initially wanted or intended to have a child, women whose partner also wanted a child or women who intended to continue working.

Proportional electoral rules favour the election of women with respect to majoritarian ones. This is consistent with the fact that in majoritarian systems personal exposure of the candidate is more relevant than in proportional systems and that women tend to be averse to such exposure. To test the effects of electoral rules on women’s representation and the quality of politicians, we collect panel data on the universe of Italian politicians from all levels of government over the period 1987-2013 and analyse an Italian reform which, in 2005, changed the electoral rule for national elections from (mostly) majoritarian to proportional, but did not affect subnational level elections. We find that this reform increased the number of women elected, while not decreasing the quality of politicians. We provide evidence of a negative selection effect under proportional rules: the elected women are not the best candidates and the quality of elected politicians could have increased (rather than remain constant) if the best female candidates had been elected. Our results are stronger in gender traditional regions, suggesting that culture matters in terms of how electoral rules affect female political representation.