Slovenské komunální volby v roce 2018 a politická reprezentace žen
The 2018 Slovak Local Elections and Women´s Political Representation

confirmation of the development or the emergence of new trends?

Summary/Abstract: The purpose of this study is to test the determinants of women’s descriptive representation at local level in Slovakia after last local elections in 2018. We focus on the determinants of women’s descriptive representation in Slovak district cities local councils and how various factors (socioeconomic, cultural, or political) affect women’s political representation at this level. Using multiple linear regression and local elections own dataset , we found that most important factor regarding women’s representation is the share of women in a previous electoral term in a given district city, together with other factors indicating the openness of local political culture to female representation, namely the presence of a female mayor in the previous term and the political representation of women in regional councils. On the contrary, the remaining factors had a much less impact of female representation often with an opposite effect to one expected. The results of our study thus show that, together with above mentioned factors, women are less favoured in larger cities, with a more educated population or stronger presence of independent councillors. So, we hypothesize about validity of desirability hypothesis, which stated that women would be much less represented in councils, where politicians have more resources, i.e. specifically in largest cities.

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