Women Leadership at the Apex. The Distinctiveness of Urban Women Mayors in Europe

ABSTRACT

Women occupy leadership positions at all levels of government. While the topic has been extensively investigated and referred to national legislatures, other venues remain under-researched. By focusing on the mayoral office, this article aims at contributing to fill the research gap regarding the local government arena and specifically executive positions. Drawing on a survey of around 2,600 European mayors, the study investigates whether women and male mayors differ in their social backgrounds, recruitment patterns and policy priorities. The resulting identikit of the ‘Urban European Woman Mayor’ points to important differences in the career path confirming the differences in policy priorities.

KEYWORDS:

• Women’s political representation
• local government
• political leadership
• mayors
• urban democracies

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. On this point, see also: Müller-Rommell and Vercesi (Müller-Rommel and Vercesi 2017); the authors found that between 1945 and 2014, only 14 women of a total of 290 prime ministers (4.5%) have led European parliamentary systems. In recent works focusing on the national levels for a large sample of countries, Gerring (Gerring et al. 2019) confirms the general trends observed, since they state that 81% of political elites overall are male, while 92% of elites at the apex (the top one or two decision-makers) are male. Specifically, gender bias is most marked at the top – that is, the apex of executive positions. In sum, it is more difficult for women to gain access to assemblies, and it is particularly difficult for them to become part of the core power apparatus.

2. Calculated considering the years from the first party membership to 2016, as reported by interviewees in the questionnaire.

3. The classification is based on the classical work of Mouritzen and Svara (2002), analyzing horizontal leadership at mayoralty.

4. The LAI index is the final product of a project aiming to measuring and comparing local autonomy in Europe. The final index takes into account 11 different variables measuring different aspects of local autonomy in 39 European countries. The data set is downloadable, together with more information, here: http://local-autonomy.andreasladner.ch/.