FRANCE

Mayor of Paris condemns hate speech against drag queen selected as Olympic torch bearer

May 2024: The Mayor of Paris has condemned ‘homophobic and transphobic comments’ aimed at drag queen Minima Gesté, who has been selected as an Olympic torchbearer. Anne Hidalgo said in a statement that the City of Paris was proud that a drag queen was carrying the Olympic flame and therefore the values of peace and humanity.

 

In a video on the official City of Paris website, Minima Gesté introduced herself as one of the 11,000 people the French capital chose to carry the Olympic flame. “Ten years ago, it would never have been possible to have a drag queen carry the Olympic flame.” “Visibility remains one of the pillars of acceptance for the LGBT community”, she added.

 

Social media commentators called the video ‘sickening’ and ‘perverse’ and described the French capital as ‘Sodom and Gomorrah 2.0’. Marion Maréchal, the leading candidate of the right-wing Reconquête! list for the forthcoming European elections, criticised Minima Gesté's ‘particularly vulgar, hyper-sexualised’ representations. “I don't think this is a good way to represent France to the world”, he said.

 

But there was also an outpouring of support and kind words for the performer. The Mayor of Paris offered her full support to Minima Gesté. “Paris City Hall will help with any legal action she may take in the face of this digital harassment, particularly relayed by far-right media”.

 

Anne Hidalgo has also reported to the Paris Public Prosecutor comments that she considered to constitute the offence of homophobic or transphobic public insult potentially.

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Further reading: French women mayors

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BRITAIN

More women mayors in charge of English metro regions

May 2024: Following local and regional elections held on 2 May 2024, the number of women mayors in charge of England’s eleven metro regions has trebled from one to three. In the North East, Kim McGuinness replaced the mayor of the North of Tyne region*, while in the East Midlands, Claire Ward became the new region’s first elected mayor. Both women are members of the Labour Party.

 

Claire Ward, who was a British Member of Parliament (MP), from 19997 to 2010, won a decisive victory over her Conservative opponent Bed Bradley, who is the current Member of Parliament for Mansfield (East Midlands). Speaking to journalists about her new position as mayor, Ms Ward said: “We know the East Midlands authority is very new, so there is a bit of work to do on that to make sure we have got the right people in place to help us to be able to deliver that change I’ve talked about and which people have elected me to do.” The new mayor was first elected as MP for Watford at 24 in 1997 and moved to Nottinghamshire after losing her seat in 2010. She became a non-executive director of Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in 2013 and was appointed chairwoman in October 2021.

 

Kim McGuinness, the newly elected Mayor of the North East metro region, won with 41 per cent of the vote with independent candidate Jamie Driscoll, a former Labour mayor, coming in second with 28 per cent of the vote. Mr Driscoll was previously the North of Tyne Mayor and was a member of the Labour Party, but left the party in 2023 after he was controversially barred from Labour’s selection process for their North East Mayoral candidate. As part of creating the North East Mayor role, the North of Tyne Mayor has been abolished.

 

During her election campaign, Kim McGuinness stated her priorities as ‘safe, reliable, affordable public transport’, ‘getting our buses back under public control’, and ‘ending child poverty’. She grew up in Newcastle and worked in finance, university education and environmental charities before entering politics.

 

In the West Yorkshire metro region, incumbent mayor Tracy Brabin was convincingly re-elected to a second term. She secured slightly more than half of the votes cast, with her nearest opponent receiving just 15 per cent of the vote. After announcing her win, she said: "I'm very humbled the public have put their faith in me for another four years." Ms Brabin pledged her new term in office would be about investing in mass transport and community facilities.

 

Voter turnout in all three elections was abysmally low. In West Yorkshire, only 32 per cent of registered voters bothered to cast their votes, while the figures for the East Midlands and the North East metro regions were 28 per cent and 31 per cent respectively.

 

* The enlarged North East combined Mayoral Authority was announced on 28 December 2022 and will be fully operational following the May 2024 local elections. It replaces the North East Combined Authority.

 

Further reading: British women mayors

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POLAND

Poland’s mayoral elections: Elected and defeated women mayors

April 2024: Women mayors performed well in Poland’s two-round local elections which took place on 7 and 21 April 2024. In the country’s eleven largest cities with female mayors, only three incumbents suffered second-round defeats. In Zabrze (Region of Slaskie), Agnieszka Rupniewska replaced Malgorzata Manka-Szulik, who had been mayor since 2006. Female mayors were also defeated in Jastrzebie-Zdroj and Belchatow.

 

In Gdansk, Aleksandra Dulkiewicz was re-elected in the first round of voting while in Lodz Hanna Zdanowska, who has been mayor since 2010, won more than 60 per cent of the second-round vote. Other cities where incumbent female mayors were successful include Slupsk (Region of Pomorskie), Ostrow Wielkopolski (Region of Wielkopolskie), Kedzierzyn-Kozle (Region of Opolskie) and Swidnica (Region of Dolnoslaskie).

 

In Kielce, the capital of the Świętokrzyskie province, Agata Wojda won a historic victory. She will be the city’s first female mayor after winning 58 per cent of second-round votes cast. She served as a city councillor from 2008 to 2023. From 2021 to 2023, she was deputy mayor of the city.

 

Results of Poland’s April 2024 mayoral elections

Elected or re-elected woman mayors

 

City of Lodz (Region of Lodzkie)

Popl: 696,000

Hanna Zdanowska, Mayor since December 2010, was re-elected on 21 April with 61% of second-round votes.

 

City of Gdansk (Region of Pomorskie)

Popl: 486,000

Aleksandra Dulkiewicz, Mayor since 2019, was re-elected on 7 April with 62% of first-round votes.

 

City of Kielce (Region of Świętokrzyskie)

Popl: 192,500

Agata Wojda was newly elected on 21 April with 57% of second-round votes.

 

City of Zabrze (Region of Slaskie)

Popl: 155,000

Agnieszka Rupniewska was newly elected in the second round of voting on 21 April. She grew up in Zabrze and later became a lawyer. She worked in the energy and waste management industries as well as for a charitable organisation. In the election, she was supported by the centrist Civic Coalition and the New Left.

 

City of Slupsk (Region of Pomorskie)

Popl: 86,000

Krystyna Danilecka-Wojewodzka, Mayor since 2018, was re-elected on 21 April with 63% of second-round votes.

 

City of Ostrow Wielkopolski (Region of Wielkopolskie)

Popl: 69,700

Beata Klimek, Mayor since December 2014, was re-elected on 21 April in the second round of voting.

 

City of Kedzierzyn-Kozle (Region of Opolskie)

Popl: 55,200

Sabina Nowosielska, Mayor since December 2014, was re-elected on 21 April with 54% of second-round votes. She failed to win in the first round by less than one percentage point.

 

City of Swidnica (Region of Dolnoslaskie)

Popl: 53,400

Beata Moskal-Slaniewska, Mayor since December 2014, was re-elected on 21 April with 56% of second-round votes. She ran with the support of the New Left.

 

City of Piekary Slaskie (Region of Śląskie)

Popl: 52,100 (National rank 82)

Slawa Uminska-Kajdan, Mayor since December 2014, was re-elected on 21 April with 52% of second-round votes.

 

City of Kolobrzeg (Region of Zachodniopomorskie)

Popl: 43,600

Anna Mleczkowska, Mayor since November 2018, was re-elected on 7 April with 65% of first-round votes. Her two opponents both received less than 20% of votes cast.

 

Not re-elected women mayors

City of Zabrze (Region of Slaskie)

Popl: 155,000

Malgorzata Manka-Szulik, Mayor since December 2006, was not re-elected.

 

City of Jastrzebie-Zdroj (Region of Slaskie)

Popl: 83,000

Anna Hetman, Mayor since 2014, was not re-elected.

 

City of Belchatow (Region of Łódzkie)

Popl: 52,800

Mariola Czechowska, Mayor since December 2014, was not re-elected.

 

Further reading: Polish women mayors

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POLAND

Gdańsk mayor Aleksandra Dulkiewicz resoundingly re-elected to second term

April 2024: Aleksandra Dulkiewicz, Mayor of the Baltic City of Gdańsk, was resoundingly re-elected in Polish local elections held on 7 April 2024. With more than 62 per cent of voters supporting her, she will not have to face a run-off election. Her nearest rival, Tomasz Rakowski, received just over 12 per cent of votes cast. All other mayoral candidates in Gdańsk failed to gain double-digit support.

 

After the first exit polls were announced, Aleksandra Dulkiewicz told enthusiastic supporters the results showed that her administration had passed the test of good local government. “During the campaign, we often heard we lack emotion. But I dream of Gdańsk as a normal, ordinary city without fireworks. I don't need fireworks. I prefer a city where everyone lives well and I believe that during my first term, we were able to work towards such a city. The results seem to show that the people of Gdańsk agree.”

 

Aleksandra Dulkiewicz has been mayor of Gdańsk since 2019. She is a member of the association Wszystko dla Gdańska (Everything for Gdańsk), which was founded by her assassinated predecessor Paweł Adamowicz. In the elections, she ran with the support of the centrist Civic Coalition (PO) party OF Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

 

A clearly disappointed runner-up, Tomasz Rakowski, from the right-wing Law and Justice party (PiS) congratulated the re-elected mayor and admitted that his party had probably reached a glass ceiling in liberal Gdańsk.

 

While in most Polish towns and cities, none of the leading candidates received the absolute majority of 50 per cent plus necessary to win outright – and thus will have to compete in the run-off election on 21 April - several women won in the first round.

 

Voters in Swinoujscie elected Joanna Agatowska as their mayor. The new mayor, a member of the New Left party, won almost 54 per cent of votes cast. In Piekary Slaskie, Sława Umińska-Kajdan won a second term, while in Kolobrzeg the incumbent mayor Anna Mieczkowska was also re-elected to a second term. Provisional results show that she was able to substantially increase her support compared to five years ago.

 

In Wroclaw, Poland’s fourth-largest city, Izabela Bodnar, a member of the centre-right Third Way party, came a close second to the incumbent mayor Jacka Sutryka. She received 31.7 per cent of the votes cast, with Mayor Sutryka on 33.4 per cent.

 

Across Poland, according to initial results, the national rightwing opposition party PiS has emerged from the local elections in Poland as the strongest force with 33.7 of the vote. The liberal-centrist Civic Coalition, led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, came second with 31.9 per cent. It achieved a major success in the capital Warsaw. The incumbent mayor Rafal Trzaskowski was confirmed in office in the first round of voting with almost 60 per cent of the vote. "Here is the hero of today," Prime Minister Tusk said of Trzaskowski on election night. The 52-year-old Trzaskowski was only narrowly defeated by incumbent Andrzej Duda in the 2020 presidential election. He has ambitions to run again in next year's presidential election.

 

Further reading: Polish women mayors

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MALTA

Malta examines ways to bolster women in local government

January 2024: Ahead of local elections, scheduled for June this year, The Maltese government is examining measures to increase the number of women in local government. Although a government spokesperson could not provide any details, it is thought that the Labour administration is considering a ‘gender corrective mechanism’ similar to the one that applies to general elections.

 

The ‘gender corrective mechanism’, used in the 2022 general election for the first time, occurs when a gender has less than 40 per cent representation, equal to 26 members of parliament. The mechanism can apply to both male and female candidates, but in reality, the intention is to increase the number of women in parliament since Malta has one of the lowest rates of female elected politicians in Europe.

 

The 2022 general election saw 12 women – six from the centre-left Labour Party and six from the centre-right Nationalist Party – elected into Parliament through the new gender corrective mechanism. The Maltese Labour Party said in its 2022 general election manifesto that, “the principle of strengthening equal participation between the sexes should also be extended on a local basis with a mechanism which is adequate for local councils.”

 

An analysis of the 2019 local council election results by The Malta Independent on Sunday newspaper shows that female representation at the local council level is low, with only one of every four local councillors across the country being a woman. Indeed, out of the 459 councillors elected across 67 local councils in Malta and Gozo, only 119 are women – equivalent to 26 per cent.

 

There is little to differentiate between the two main political parties either on this topic: the Labour Party had 400 local council candidates, out of whom 98 were women – a proportion of 24.5 per cent; while the Nationalist Party had 293 local council candidates, out of whom 86 were women – a slightly better proportion of 29.3 per cent. In the 2019 local elections, only ten Maltese communities elected women mayors, Now, after the female mayors of Mosta, Cospicua and Floriana were elected to parliament in 2022, the number of women mayors in Malta has dropped to seven.

 

Malta has now eight local councils made up entirely of men and only two with women councillors in the majority.

 

Further reading: Spain’s women mayors

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Mayors' Code of Ethics | American Women Mayors | Canadian Women Mayors | Mexican Women Mayors | French Women Mayors | British Women Mayors | Polish Women Mayors | Dutch Women Mayors | Spanish Women Mayors | German women mayors | Obituary: Leila Mustapha, Mayor of Raqqa, who died aged 35 |

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