What Determines Women's Political Representation at the Local Level? A Fine-grained analysis of the European Regions.
Author:
Sundström, A. & Stockemer, D.
Date:
2015
Language:
English
Region:
Europe
Country:
[unspecified]
Full Harvard Reference:
Sundström, A. & Stockemer, D. (2015). What Determines Women's Political Representation at the Local Level? A Fine-grained analysis of the European Regions. International Journal of Comparative Sociology 1-21. pp. 254–274.
Mainly investigating the share of women in national parliaments, the vast cross-national literature on women’s descriptive (numerical) representation frequently overlooks women’s local representation. Yet, local councils are important political arenas. This article asks to what extent are women underrepresented there and what are the determinants of the variation of women’s local representation within and across countries? The article investigates these questions through a subnational-level study, covering 272 regions in 29 European countries. The findings determined that regions with high female labour force participation support for leftist rather than radical right parties and high degrees of urbanization tend to elect more women.