THE WOMEN MAYORS PROJECT  Female mayors in Europe:The most powerful women By Women Mayors* ON THIS PAGE: Introduction ||| Northern Europe ||| Eastern Europe ||| Western Europe ||| Southern Europe ||| South Eastern Europe ON OTHER PAGES: Capital cities with women mayors ||| Women mayors in America ||| Women mayors in Europe ||| Europe's most powerful female mayors ||| South America's women mayors | Mayors, parties, politics | 2023 research: German women mayors in 2023 WORLD MAYOR 2023: The 2023 World Mayor Prize is dedicated to Friendship between Cities. The Honours will be awarded to mayors and cities that have made outstanding contributions to friendship, partnership and cooperation between towns and cities at home and across borders. PLEASE ELECT YOUR CANDIDATES Country by country review February 2022: While the total number of women mayors across Europe is deplorably low, some of the continent’s politically, economically and culturally most important cities have female leaders. Paris and Berlin are now governed by women. Women are also in charge in a number of smaller capital cities as well as in municipalities of national and international importance including Barcelona, Zurich, Copenhagen, Oslo, Lodz, Amsterdam, Strasbourg, Cologne and Sofia. Europe’s longest-serving female mayors include Martine Aubry, Lille, since 2001; Aino-Maija Luukkonen, Pori, since 2004; Corine Mauch, Zurich, since 2009; Hanna Zdanowska, Lodz, since 2010; Yordanka Fandakova, Sofia, since 2011; Katrin Stjernfeldt Jammeh, Malmö, since 2013; Ros Jones, Doncaster, since 2013; Anne Hidalgo, Paris, since 2014; Benedikte Kiaer, Helsingor, since 2014; Fatma Sahin, Gaziantep, since 2014; Jasna Gabric, Trbovlje, since 2014; Ada Colau, Barcelona, since 2015 and Marianne Borgen, Oslo, since 2015. The majority – 40 out of 71 – of female mayors of large European cities belong to parties on the left of the political spectrum. Some 17 are members of centrist parties, while eight mayors are on the nationalist right. Six mayors describe themselves as independent or unaffiliated. Northern Europe ESTONIA Two of the country’s top 15 towns and cities have women mayors The two female mayors from Estonia represent the third and fifth largest cities of the country. Katri Raik, Mayor of Narva (population 57,000) was the country’s interior minister between 2018 and 2019. Before joining the government, she, as the rector of the Estonian Academy of Security Sciences, was responsible for the training of the country’s civil servants. Kohtla-Järve, the city of Mayor Ljudmila Jantšenko, has a population of 35,000.
DENMARK Three of the country’s top 15 towns and cities have women mayors Sophie Andersen, Mayor of the country’s capital Copenhagen (population 800,000), succeeded the city’s long-serving mayor Frank Jensen in November 2021. Between 2014 and 2021 she was council chairperson of the Danish Capital Region with its 29 municipalities.
FINLAND Five of the country’s top 15 towns and cities have women mayors While for many people outside Finland, Helsinki is the only Finnish city they could name, the country has a number of other sizeable and economically important communities. Tampere, with a population of more than 240,000, is country’s largest inland city. Turku, the oldest city in Finland, has a population of just under 200,000.
NORWAY Ten of the country’s top 15 towns and cities have women mayors Norway is the only European country where the majority of mayors of large cities are women. Some like, like the mayors of Oslo, Drammen, Alesund and Haugesund have been re-elected since they first stood. All 10 mayors belong to parties on the left.
SWEDEN Two of the country’s top five towns and cities have women mayors. Since 2002, four of Stockholm’s five mayors (municipal commissioners for finance) have been women. Two belonged to the centre-right Moderate party, while the other two were Social Democrats. Malmö’s Katrin Stjernfeldt Jammeh is the city’s first female mayor.
Eastern Europe CZECH REPUBLIC One of the country’s top 15 towns and cities has a woman mayor Markéta Vaňkov has been involved in local and regional politics since 2002 when she was elected local councillor of the Brno district.
HUNGARY Two of the country’s top 15 towns and cities have women mayors
POLAND Two of the country’s top 15 towns and cities have women mayors The local administrations of Lodz and Gdansk have a history of opposing national authoritarianism. In Gdansk, the birthplace of Solidarity in 1980, Mayor Pawel Adamowicz, who was assassinated in 2019, was a forceful opponent of Poland’s right-wing central government. He supported LGBT rights and spoke in favour of immigration during the 2015 crisis. His successor, Aleksndra Dulkiewicz, is the city’s first female mayor. Hanna Zdanowska was re-elected twice despite various attempts by right-wing opponents to discredit her.
RUSSIA Three of the country's top 15 towns and cities have women mayors All three female mayors belong to United Russia, the country's largest and governing party. The mayors of Chelabinsk and Omsk were elected to their post by their respective city councils (dumas).
SLOVAKIA Three of the country’s top 15 towns and cities have women mayors Andrea Turčanová, a member of the European Union’s Committee of the Regions, has lived and worked all her life in Presov.
Western Europe AUSTRIA Two of the country’s top 15 towns and cities have women mayors Elke Kahr is the first female mayor in Graz and Austria’s first and only Communist mayor. On Graz’s city council she heads a coalition of Social Democrats and Greens.
BELGIUM One of the country’s top 15 towns and cities has a woman mayor. Molenbeek, one of 19 municipalities in the Brussels capital region, captured international headlines when it emerged that seven men involved in the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris grew up and lived in the town. Since then, the town has worked hard to leave the stigma of terrorism behind.
FRANCE Five of the country’s top 15 towns and cities have women mayors Anne Hidalgo, who succeeded Bertrand Delanoë as Mayor of Paris, is the French capital’s first female mayor. She is currently the Socialist Party candidate for President of France. Martine Aubry, one of the longest-serving mayors in Europe, aimed to become the Socialists’ presidential candidate in 2012 but lost out to François Hollande, who went on to win the general election.
GERMANY Two of the country’s top 15 towns and cities have women mayors For a country that prides itself for promoting women in government and business - half the country’s federal government cabinet ministers are women – the offices of mayors are still very much a male domain. Cities like Hamburg, Munich, Stuttgart and Hannover never had a woman as municipal leader. Both Franziska Giffey and Henriette Reker are the first female mayors of their respective cities.
2023 research: German women mayors in 2023 LUXEMBOURG One of the country’s top five towns and cities has a women mayor
NETHERLANDS Two of the country’s top 15 towns and cities have women mayors
SWITZERLAND Four of the country’s top 15 towns and cities have women mayors Since her election in March 2009, Zurich’s Mayor Corine Mauch has become a role model for women wanting to make a career in local government. She set up an office for gender equality and implemented rules to ensure that at least 30 per cent of staff in every department are women. Zurich is also the first local authority in Switzerland to have signed up to the ‘trans welcome initiative’.
UNITED KINGDOM Five of the country’s 25 local authorities with directly elected leaders have women mayors. While three of England’s 21 metropolitan boroughs with directly elected mayors have women at the helm, only one the 10 powerful metro regions are led by a woman. London has never had a female mayor and of the four boroughs with elected mayors only one, Newham, has a woman at the top.
Southern Europe ITALY None of the country’s top 15 towns and cities have women mayors PORTUGAL Two of the country’s top 15 towns and cities have women mayors
SPAIN Two of the country’s top 15 towns and cities have women mayors Ada Colau became a political activist in 2009 when she co-founded the organisation ‘People affected by mortgages’. It was set up in Barcelona in response to the rise of evictions caused by unpaid mortgages following the 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent collapse of the Spanish property market.
South Eastern Europe ALBANIA Two of the country's top 5 towns and cities have women mayors Albania's second and fifths largest cities have female mayors. The mayor of Durrës belongs to the country's ruling Socialist Party, while the city leader of Shkodër is a member of the centre-right Democrat Party.
BULGARIA One of the country’s top 15 towns and cities has a woman mayor Until the November 2021 general election, which her party lost, the Mayor of Sofia, Yordanka Fandakova, was one of the favourites to succeed the former Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, who himself was Mayor of the Bulgarian capital from 2005 to 2009.
CROATIA Two of the country’s top 15 towns and cities have women mayors
GREECE None of the country’s top 15 towns and cities have women mayors NORTH MACEDONIA One of the country's top 5 towns and cities has a women mayor Danela Arsovska, the Mayor of North Macedonia's capital city Skopje, is one of the country's most prominent politicians. She serves on the World Bank panel for International Centre for Settlement of Investment disputes, is a court member at the OSCE in Geneva and represents North Macedonia at the International Chamber of Commerce
ROMANIA Two of the country’s top 15 towns and cities have women mayors
SERBIA Two of the country’s top 15 towns and cities have women mayors
SLOVENIA Two of the country’s top 15 towns and cities have women mayors
TURKEY One of the country’s top 15 towns and cities has a woman mayor In a country where there are very few women with senior political roles, Fatma Sahin stands out. She is a co-founder of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), was elected three times to the country’s parliament and was the only female minister in Prime Minister Recep Erdogan’s 2011 cabinet. In 2014, she was elected the first female mayor of Gaziantep. Under her leadership, the city has been praised for managing the influx of some 100,000 refugees from Syria.
* The research for Women Mayors in Europe was carried out by City Mayors during December 2021 , January and February 2022. The analysis comprised 420 cities in 30 countries. Follow @City_Mayors |
