Mainly investigating the share of women in national parliaments, the vast cross-national literature on women’s descriptive (numerical) representation frequently overlooks women’s local representation. Yet, local councils are important political arenas. To what extent are women underrepresented there? What are the determinants of the variation of women’s local representation within and across countries? We investigate these questions through a subnational-level study, covering 272 regions in 29 European countries. Using multilevel modeling, we find that regions with high female labor force participation support for leftist rather than radical right parties and high degrees of urbanization tend to elect more women. Our results also indicate that high women’s representation levels at the national level trickle down to the local level.
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