Municipality 2024, the presence of women on the list drops to 40%. Aspiring mayors only 21%

The contenders for the tricolour sash in the 2024 administrative elections will be mainly men. The women candidates involved in this electoral round are only 21% of the total, although this figure is rising slightly (20% in 2023 and 19% in 2022). At this rate, parity would be reached in 2053. On the other hand, looking at the lists of aspiring municipal councillors, there are more women candidates, 41% of the total (50,870 out of 123,536), but down 2% on 2023. The data emerge from elaborations by Centro Studi Enti Locali, based on Viminale data.

Also identical to the previous two-year period is the percentage of municipalities in which the race to become first citizen is all male: in no less than 6 municipalities out of 10 there is a complete absence of female mayoral candidates. The percentage of cases in which - vice versa - the electoral competition is an all-female affair rises, albeit slightly (from 4 to 5%), 191 municipalities, against the 2,613 in which the candidates are all male. In 74% of cases (77% in 2023), the number of male candidates exceeds the number of female candidates. In 8% of cases (+ 1% compared to the previous year), the opposite occurs and there are more female mayoral candidates than male candidates. In 18% of cases, however, the challenge is perfectly balanced.

There are significant fluctuations in these percentages from a territorial point of view. The regions with the highest number of aspiring mayors running are Emilia Romagna, Tuscany (both at 26%) and Veneto (25%). At the other extreme are Campania (13%), Abruzzo (15%), Liguria and Molise (16%). In between: Lazio (17%), Umbria (19%), Piedmont and Apulia (21%), Marche (22%), Lombardy and Sardinia (23%).

"If one widens the view to the entire lists, the situation improves, but the female gender is still underrepresented," explains Veronica Potenza, who processed the data: female candidates are 41% of the total (50,870 out of 123,536), 2% less than in 2023. Although the percentage of entities that do not meet the 'pollen quotas' target is still high compared to the 2023 administrative elections, the percentage of municipalities under 5,000 inhabitants in which female candidates were less than a third of the total has dropped significantly, from 47% to 37%. However, the law only establishes for municipalities with more than 5,000 inhabitants a maximum quota of candidates of the most represented gender in each list: it cannot be more than two thirds of the candidates on the same list.

"The architects of this improvement," Potenza goes on to explain, "seem to have been above all the bodies in the centre-north, which in this electoral round take the lion's share, given that more than eight out of ten of the municipalities called to the polls are located in these areas. In fact, only 33% of municipalities in the north, 34% of those in the centre and 57% of those in the south and the islands missed the target. At the two extremes are Emilia Romagna, where the small municipalities with less than a third of female candidates on the lists are 15% of the total, and Campania where this percentage rises to 76%.