Women must play a stronger role in European local and regional government

By the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe*

October 2024: Making local and regional democracy more inclusive means, first and foremost, increasing the proportion of women among elected representatives but also opening up assemblies to young people and allowing groups such as people with disabilities, the elderly and migrants to make their voices heard and express themselves.

Women mayors

Long reserved exclusively for men, the right to vote had been expanded to include women, thereby making elected officials more representative. Bryony Rudkin, Chair of the Congress Committee on Social Inclusion and Human Dignity and councillor at Ipswich Borough Council (UK), believes that the same should be done with other groups that were under-represented or poorly represented in assemblies. In her view, increasing diversity in this way would also help to stem democratic backsliding and reduce political polarisation.

As a member of the Greek Parliament, Eirini Dourou has served in the Congress for many years. She is outraged by the sexism and gender-based violence that still goes on in political life and points out that women remain under-represented among mayors in many countries: in Greece, there are only 22 women mayors out of a total of 322, a level of participation that could be increased, she believes, if women were secure in the knowledge that they would not be subjected to bullying or verbal and sexist abuse during election campaigns or while serving in office. In her view, it was up to local authorities to foster an environment more conducive to women's participation in political life.

Young people

Young people also needed to feel listened to by policymakers and that they had a voice in the political process. Tobias Flessenkemper, head of the Council of Europe's Youth Department, describes the Council's efforts starting in the 1980s to lower the voting age in member states. He points to the structures - the only ones of their kind in the world - created by the Council of Europe to encourage youth participation, the chief examples being the European Youth Centres in Strasbourg and Budapest. The Youth Delegate for Finland, Maria Markkula, describes her “dream” of seeing youth and children's councils and parliaments spring up in all countries so that their voices could be heard everywhere and urged both the Congress and national associations to work towards making this dream a reality.

In the view of Soeren Schumacher, Chair of the German delegation to the Congress, the most effective way to boost youth participation was to lower the voting age to 16. This was already the case in several German Länder (regional states), but each Land determines its electorate as it sees fit.

Election turnout

In addition to inadequate citizen representation, other factors are detrimental to voter turnout, foremost among them the belief that elections are not fair or that the outcome was a foregone conclusion. Stewart Dickson, Chair of the Council for Democratic Elections of the Council of Europe and member of the Northern Ireland Assembly, believes that to restore voter confidence, elections must be organised in a way that is beyond reproach, including in practical terms. Whatever the outcome of a ballot, it would be accepted if that ballot were conducted transparently, pointed out Mr Dickson. That, indeed, was why the Congress observes local and regional elections in all the member states and then publishes opinions and recommendations to improve the way they are conducted.

Morocco, Cyprus, Ukraine

Abdelaziz Derouiche, President of the Moroccan Association of Presidents of Councils of Prefectures and Provinces, points to the steps taken by his country to improve the participation of women and young people in political life. Very rare only a few years ago, more and more Moroccan women were now serving in local elected assemblies. The Youth Delegate for Cyprus, Liana Ioannides, believes that women are still not sufficiently involved in political life and hopes that the role of women in her country's history, particularly during the 1974 war and then in the peace process, should be better studied and highlighted.

Ukrainian local and regional government associations describe some initiatives to help young people in rural and isolated regions, as well as in Crimea.

Social media

Congress members are concerned about the influence of social media, with many elected representatives noting with regret that young people often trusted TikTok more than local authorities and echoing Eirini Dourou’s call for the Congress to prepare a report and a toolbox to help them tackle this complex issue.

Véronique Bertholle, deputy mayor of Strasbourg and Congress Spokesperson on youth, notes that exclusive use of social media and lack of reliable information are not only an issue among young people and recalled how, while manning a polling station in the summer, she had discovered that half the voters did not know how to vote, or even how to tell the difference between the first and second rounds. As several local elected representatives of the Conference explain, this proved that there was an urgent need to reintroduce civic education in schools and in general.

* Congress of Local and Regional Authorities

The Congress of Local and Regional Authorities is an institution of the Council of Europe responsible for strengthening local and regional democracy in its 46 member states and assessing the application of the European Charter of Local Self-Government. As the voice of Europe’s municipalities and regions, it works to foster consultation and political dialogue between national governments and local and regional authorities through cooperation with the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers.

The Congress is made up of two chambers: the Chamber of Local Authorities and the Chamber of Regions. It has 306 representatives and 306 substitutes, all appointed for five years, representing over 130,000 local and regional authorities in the Council of Europe’s 46 member states. The Congress’s work is organised into three committees: a Monitoring Committee, a Governance Committee and a Social Inclusion Committee.

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On other pages: Women Mayors from Europe | Directory of European women mayors |