The Representation of Women in the Position of Mayor in the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 2006-2014: A Comparative Analysis of the Factors of Success

Abstract

Main objective of this article is to analyse political determinants of the descriptive representation of women at the local level in communal elections (i.e. the position of mayor) in the Czech Republic and Slovakia over the past decade. It focuses on the political opportunity structure (i.e. the structure of relationships that affect social and political behaviour) and questions whether this structure affects also women's political representation. It shows that women are significantly advantaged in municipalities where women have held a mayoral post in a previous electoral term. In contrast to other studies, previous women's representation in a municipal council is here found to have only a limited effect. The strong negative effect of the direct election of mayors and the negative effect of municipal size (only in Slovakia) indicate that women's representation as mayors may be the result of interdependent phenomena that are a combination of institutional structure (e.g. electoral procedure, the mayor's powers) and political contextual factors (past experience with a female mayor-not necessarily incumbents). This finding challenges earlier studies and it shows that any effort to identify a clear list of determinants of women's representation as mayors is a complex task, making it difficult to pursue a broader comparative study in a different institutional environment or a different political culture.

Women mayors in the Slovak Republic in the last two decades: The municipalities size category perspective

“…Although the increase did not increase significantly in the observed period, the increase is still present. Spatial representation of the number of women in the leadership of local governments in Slovakia Maškarinec and Klimovský (2017) or Maškarinec et al (2018) assumed that there are fewer women mayors in municipalities larger in area, which is also confirmed by our research. Figures 2 to 7 show spatial changes in the number of municipalities with female mayors after the local elections.…”

“…The estimation of the probit model might check the robustness of the results. The logistic regression was employed also by Maškarinec et al (2018), while in Maškarinec and Klimovský (2017) the multiple regression based on the ordinary least square estimator was used. The diagnostics of the logit and probit models differ from those based on the OLS estimator (Hosmer and Lemeshow 2000).…”

“…Maškarinec et al (2020) similarly analyzed the results of elections to the VÚC (a self-governing region or higher territorial unit which is the highest territorial self-governing unit in Slovakia. Maškarinec et al (2018) focused on 71 district towns in the period 2006-2014. They have created a model that tested the assumed relationship between the representation of women and its relationship with the size of the population, while the logistic model was characterized by the authors as unreliable due to the insignificance of the statistical estimate.…”

Women Mayors in Slovakia

“…Part of the research focuses on women's barriers to entering the local politics, identifying socio-economic (e.g. double burden defined in Einhorn, 1993), institutional and cultural barriers (Sztwiertnia & Hellová, 2012), institutional and demographic barriers (Holman, 2017), the presence of men's domination (Sumbas, 2019) and barriers related to re-election (Brollo & Troiano, 2016;Maškarinec, Klimovský & Danišová, 2018;Maguire, 2018).…”

“…In Slovakia, women underrepresentation in public sector, as well as in local politics is evident (Maškarinec, Klimovský & Danišová, 2018;Maškarinec, Klimovský & Bláha, 2020). Men predominate in the leadership of local governments, especially in larger cities, which are attractive to them in terms of power and financial reward (Bitušíková, 2005; Crowder-Meyer, Gadarian & Trounstine, 2015).…”