Status: 21.09.2022 5:09 p.m
In only one German city do women occupy half of the seats on the city council – in all the others there are fewer women. This is shown by a new study on the distribution of local political offices.
Women continue to be underrepresented in local government offices. On average, only a good third of the elected members of the city councils of German cities are women.
This is the conclusion reached by researchers at the FernUniversität in Hagen. According to this, only in the city council in Kassel, Hesse, are most members female: around half of the 71 elected representatives.
According to the study, Ingolstadt in Bavaria did the worst. Here women make up just a quarter of the city council members.
A total of 80 cities analyzed
For their study, a political science research team led by Lars Holtkamp and Elke Wiechmann looked at 77 major German cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants. In addition, there were the district assemblies in the three city states of Berlin, Hamburg and Bremen as local parliaments.
“We recorded the websites of the major cities, evaluated them statistically and supplemented the missing data with on-site research,” explains Holtkamp in a press release from the university.
The more important the office, the fewer women
Five local political leadership positions were included: the mayor’s office, deputies, parliamentary group chairs, committee chairs and council members.
“The main finding is that women are still underrepresented in all positions. The more important these offices become in local politics, the more pronounced this underrepresentation becomes,” summarizes Wiechmann.
| city | percentage of women on the council or in district councils |
|---|---|
kassel | 50.70% |
Oldenburg | 48.00% |
Ulm | 47.50% |
Frankfurt am Main | 46.67% |
… | |
Munich | 43.59% |
Berlin | 42.70% |
Potsdam | 42.59% |
… | |
Cologne | 41.86% |
… | |
Hamburg | 37.08% |
… | |
Magdeburg | 26.42% |
Salzgitter | 26.09% |
Ingolstadt | 24.49% |
Trend slightly positive
The study is the fifth evaluation by the research team since 2008. According to their own statements, they observed a slightly positive trend over this period. The proportion of women on city councils in large cities has increased: from 32.8 percent in 2008 to 37.7 percent in 2022.
However, this trend does not apply to all positions: while the proportion of women in the mayor’s office, the highest political office in the municipality, has fallen, according to the study, more and more councilors are female. More posts such as group or committee chairmen are therefore in female hands.
There are also differences between the parties: in the CSU, CDU and FDP, very few women chair parliamentary groups or committees.
More female elected representatives with a quota for women
The CDU recently debated the issue at its party conference – and decided to introduce a women’s quota. From next year, a third of the CDU posts on board members from the district level will have to be filled by women, from 2024 it will be 40 percent and from mid-2025 50 percent.
This could have an impact on future appointments to offices: the study by the FernUniversität in Hagen shows that most female elected representatives come from parties with quotas for women, so far the Greens, the Left Party and the SPD.
The study was carried out on behalf of the Böll Foundation and published under the title “Representation of women in local politics”.