Research has also shown that female politicians are more likely to allocate resources toward education programs. This is important, because there’s a notable lifespan disparity between people with an education and people without. “Like the poor, the least educated experience a range of socioeconomic disadvantages,” write Paul Novosad, an assistant professor of economics at Dartmouth, and Charlie Rafkin, an economics PhD student at MIT.

Perhaps the Canadian study’s most striking finding was that national health improves as the number of female politicians increases regardless of partisanship or the political ideals of the elected women. In other words, it doesn’t matter which political party female politicians belong to. Simply having more women in government seems to be the key to improving national health.

“Electing more women in government means that different issues and interests will be introduced and advanced,” the report’s co-author, University of Waterloo assistant professor Edwin Ng, told The Week.