First, the good news: women are increasingly succeeding in winning seats on local representative bodies. This is the conclusion reached by the second parity statistics compiled by the State Statistical Office on the 2019 local elections.

This report is based on a total of 1,317 election results reported by local authorities. Of these, 334 elections were held on a first-past-the-post basis with a single nomination, and 983 elections were held on a proportional representation basis. Five years ago, the proportion of women was 21.3 percent – today, one in four seats (23.8 percent) at the municipal, association, and district levels is held by a woman! However, this result also shows that women continue to be underrepresented.

As the second parity statistics show, things are looking quite good in terms of parity in the state capital of Mainz.

The proportion of women in the city council of Mainz is 45 percent, which is five percent higher than after the 2014 election. Of all independent cities, Mainz has the highest proportion of women, followed by the independent cities of Trier and Kaiserslautern, each with 41.1 percent. Worms ranks last with only 25 percent women.

However, before a woman can become a city councilor, she must first follow the path of assembly participant (this includes all eligible voters who participated in the nomination meetings of the election proposal carriers for the election of candidates for a place on the respective election proposal lists), registered applicant, and registered candidate. Here, too, the figures paint an interesting picture:

Looking at the numbers of female assembly participants, it can be seen that the state capital of Mainz has a female share of 32.2 percent here – an increase of 3.6 percentage points compared to 2014. This puts the state capital Mainz in the middle of the pack among independent cities – led by the city of Trier with 37.2 percent and followed by the city of Worms with 29.2 percent.

The average in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate is 28.8 percent women. The independent cities have a rate of 33.8 percent, while the rural districts have a rate of 26.2 percent.

In terms of female candidates, the state capital Mainz increased by 4.4 percentage points in 2019 to 36.1 percent compared to 2014. Frankenthal leads the way among independent cities with 40.8 percent, while Worms brings up the rear with 33.3 percent. 

Of the female candidates who ran, 16.6 percent were actually elected in the state capital of Mainz. For men, the figure is only 14.8 percent.

This is where the state capital Mainz stands out positively from other municipalities. In general, women who make it onto the electoral list are significantly less likely to be elected to a municipal representative body than men who stand for election. By comparison, an average of 36.4 percent of men were successful, while only 28.2 percent of women were – a difference of 8.2 percentage points. This means that women are almost 23 percent less likely to be elected. The state capital of Mainz presents a better picture in this regard.

The differences between the parties remain. When looking at the individual parties, the Greens stand out as the party with by far the highest level of gender parity. However, even the Greens, with 47 percent women, do not quite achieve an equal distribution of spots on their candidate lists. 

Among the other parties, the proportion of women ranges roughly from just under a quarter to a little over a third. DIE LINKE and the SPD take second and third place with shares of 34.6 and 30.9 percent, respectively. Bringing up the rear are the AfD and the FDP.

An overall improvement on 2014 – but still room for improvement. If women in politics represented the same percentage of the population as they do overall, at least 50 percent of the committees would be female.