Only 6.5% of mayors in Romania are women, official data shows

Only 207 women were elected as mayors in Romania in the June 9 local elections, representing 6.51% of the total 3,179 mayors, according to an analysis by Women for a Better Society, a non-governmental organization advocating for women's rights and gender equality.

Moreover, only 3,606 women became local councilors, representing 9.01% of the total 40,022 local councilor mandates.

The counties with the most women elected at the local level are Dolj (10 female mayors and 165 female local councilors) and Bacău (8 mayors and 157 local councilors). The counties with the fewest women elected are Bistrița-Năsăud (no female mayors and only 36 female local councilors) and Giurgiu (one mayor and 28 local councilors).

"These figures, which no political party in Romania talks about, show that politics remains an almost exclusively male domain. One would expect that at least in the second and third echelons of local public administrations, there would be more women. However, we see that the situation is much worse than at the parliamentary level, where representation is approximately 18%,” said Ana Maria Pătru, president of the NGO Women for a Better Society.

“The situation also denotes the hypocrisy of our party leaders, who have boasted about promoting women to silence the press and civil society, but when it came to putting them on lists, they forgot their promises. This is evident from the fact that all parties proposed only 1,200 female candidates for mayoral positions,” she added.

According to the NGO head, the underrepresentation of women is partly why the 2023 Gender Equality Index by the European Institute for Gender Equality placed Romania at the bottom of the EU.

According to Women for a Better Society, the current government has blocked several bills in Parliament aimed at encouraging the promotion of women in eligible positions on party lists for the parliamentary elections scheduled for December 1. The NGO calls on parliamentary political parties to unblock legislative initiatives regarding the presence of at least 30% of women in eligible positions and to block public funds for parties that do not meet this condition.

"Ideally, these laws should at least be debated and voted on. I count on the fact that the women who are currently in politics and Parliament will also want the promotion of these normative acts and will rally to the cause we are trying to promote," concluded Ana Maria Pătru.

(Photo source: Volodymyr Scherbak | Dreamstime.com