Substantive Representation of Mayors across Europe: Does Gender Matter?

Lluís Medir* Annick Magnier** Marcello Cabria**

*Corresponding autor: lluismedir@ub.edu Department Ciència Política, Universitat de Barcelona

**Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche e Sociali, University of Florence

Preliminary version. Please do not circulate or quote.

Abstract The existence of a gender gap in political elites is a well-documented phenomena, widely scrutinized at national and regional levels. Indeed, there is a large body of research on women’s political representation, also at the local level –councillors-. However women mayors are still a scarce object of study in Europe, and scholars of local government and gender often highlight the lack of literature on the subject. Local politics is a fertile bed test for large N analysis of elected politicians, however, data are scarce and the limited literature that does focus on women in local government has frequently relied upon assumptions and rules of thumb, not well empirically grounded. Our rich dataset, based on a unique survey made to 2691 Mayors of municipalities above 10.000 inhabitants across 29 European countries -European Mayor 2nd Round-, allows us to test the gender differences while controlling by institutional constraints at the local level. In this paper we test the differences among men and women when they are at mayoralty in a variety of subjects, ranging from values, priorities, tasks and personal traits. We are facing the classical questions that had been, at least in the European continent, underdeveloped for women at mayoralty. In a nutshell, do women’s perceptions and role behaviour also differ from men at mayoralty? which variables account for these differences, if they exist? Our results do not clearly support, for European mayors, some of the conclusions on the significance of gender in substantive representation.

1 Introduction At the forefront of local institutions, European mayors play a crucial role in the interplay between local institutions and citizens, as they are embedded in a complex political scenario characterized by growing social and economic responsabilites together with institutional constraints derived from local governance. In this increasingly complex space, Mayors struggle between democracy, responsiveness and ressources. Usually with scarce competences and limited budgets, they are forced to prioritize and scale policies and activities. A basic understanding of how gender affects those crucial aspects of European mayors is the main objective of this paper.

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Curiously, the presentations of the different empirical researches on the gender dimension in leadership attitudes and behaviors, dedicated to various professional areas, are opened by similar declarations: the specific field of activity they observe has been particularly neglected and it is exceptionally lacking of empirical evidence. Not to enter in such competition, we may simply remind that, compared to the large corpus of gender studies, the empirical research on female leadership in the State institutions which go further the quantitative control of the presence of women in the apex positions is not rich and that the observation becomes even more evident when we consider the local government level, particularly in Europe. Recently, the gap has been acknowledged and different researchers are beginning to try to fill the gap (for a review and a series of national insights see Pini and MacDonald 2011, Navarro and Medir 2015), it remains nevertheless uncontestable that most of the available researches on women substantive representation are situated in the central or regional institutions, and that the few empirical references on gender differences among people in charge of the local governments are much more easily found in the US literature. Most of the Investigations of sex differences in the behavior of elected officials often reveal that female policymakers are more likely than their male colleagues to represent women’s interests. Women in office are more likely to lend their support to feminist proposals or, more generally, to campaign on “issues of special concern to women” and women’s. However, to our knowledge, so far no systematic work has tackled European local elites’ perceptions over their role from a gender perspective through specific surveys to mayors. Following most of the literature on the gender gap, this paper intends to analyse the differences in perceptions of European mayors through gender when it comes to report on policy orientations (i.e substantive representation), role exercise and social background (“descriptive” representation). Mostly, we expect women mayors to differ on two main aspects: socio-political profile and perceptions on what women foresee as their main tasks in office (projected mayoral role). However, due to the effect of local institutions and its particularities, we do not expect large differences in what women effectively declare they do, once at mayoralty (declared mayoral behaviour). We expect the declared mayoral behaviour to be affected by the specific institutional constraints in which local governments act, while the projected mayoral role could be more affected by gender biases, rather than institutional ones. In other words, gender matters when political actors foresee their mayoral role, and for their socio-political

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characteristics, while the institutional constraints blurr these gender differences, by equilizing the effective declared mayoral tasks. We intend to find out to what extent the gender of mayors translates into differences in role behaviour and role expectations. We assess this statement using data of the second round of Polleader. 2 Women at mayoralty: scarce European evidence

In this work, we observe women (and men) in charge of a highly, and perhaps the most specific role in local government: a role extremely visible, of general representation of a local community, the Mayor. It can be supposed to offer more than others large opportunities for personal interpretations of the representative functions, in the binding framework, obviously, of different institutional settings and political, social, economic and financial backgrounds. In this apex position the impact of ‘the 3M-mantra’ rule is particularly intense, since mayors are, predominantly, male, middle-aged and middle class (Steyvers & Medir, 2017). However, the counterargument regarding their operative functions can also be plausible: in their representative functions, both men and women at the mayoralty, are pressed by concrete problems of citizens and are extremely close to day-to-day problems, pushing men and women at mayoralty to act politically in similar ways.

In order to disentangle such ambiguity, we shall preliminary briefly account how much in the European political landscape women mayors -and their socio-political characteristics- remain exceptions. And we shall successively deal with classical hypotheses according to which different experiences or different psychological predispositions, but also the same acknowledgment of this exceptionality, introduce differences in their interpretation of the role. The data allow to discuss some of these most classical hypotheses, but the large information collected on the background of the mayors, on the municipality they are in charge of, and the numerosity of the samples typical of the researches on the local political class, permit also to control the relative impact of the gender dimension and of the personal and environmental characteristics.

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2.1 Mayoral representation: between preferences and duties.

In a systemic interpretation of the process of representation (Mansbridge 2003, Saward 2010), which considers representation as a diffuse activity, in which converge the State-based “representative democracy” and the “societal democratic representation” resulting from the effective claims for representation from individuals and organisations, the interpretations of their own representative role by the political actors in charge can be mainly characterized under two different profiles. They consist on one side of an image of the correct relation with the other actors of the representative process (more and more imposing themselves in a context of the contestation of “representative” democracy), and on the other side of an image of the issues (and the corresponding members of the society) which must be included in the public agenda. Under these two profiles, the literature suggests that gender may have a strong impact.

Concerning the relations with the other important actors of their daily-life as representatives, research of “interconnecteness” more than propensity to pretend the application of rules would be one of the defining features of the women’s voice according to the seminal Carol Gilligan In a Different Voice (1982, 172-3). Men and women “construe social reality differently”, the female voice values responsibility, caring and interconnectedness. A different attitude towards the local society actors would correspond to different managerial attitudes (Meeir et al. 2006, Hamidullah et al. 2015): less authoritative downward management, more value on teamwork, collegiality and cooperation (Beck 1991, Rinehart 1991).

Concerning the policy agenda, the same belonging to a narrow minority, according to the logic of the “politics of presence” (Philipps 1995) may also lead women mayors, it is supposed, to claim particularly to represent the female part of the world, to feel a special duty to make the gender inequalities and the gender question more present in the local public debate and agenda. Distinctive experiences characterizing women’s lives (childbearing, occupation, unequal positions in paid and unpaid work…) would result in preferences best represented by those who have shared these experiences. The premise is not rarely contested (see for ex. Young 2000), but we must consider that a substantial corpus of empirical research, mainly in different areas of the State, show that female politicians come to institutions with distinctive attitudes and values and that they have

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contributed to improving women’s positions in society through their work in parliaments and executive offices (Lovenduski and Norris 2003; Mateo-Diaz 2005, Thomas and Wilcox 2005, Dodson 2006). Some empirical studies in local government in the Nordic countries report correspondingly a more marked interest among women in social policy agendas, and outcomes beneficial for women in their daily lives (Bratton and Ray 2002, Wangnerud and Sundell 2012). The dichotomy materialist/post-materialist values helped Vanderleeuw, Sandovici and Jarmon (2011) to stress other differences in values among City leaders. In their study on Texan local leaders, female mayors appear to defend more often post-materialist values; but the materialist values (which concern what are the pre-conditions for the population to aspire to post-materialist resources) remain equally cared. In other words, differences may be observed, but a common -compulsary- vision emerges, since problems and challenges at the local level are extremely close to elected politicians.

2.2 Substantive representation at mayoralty: from projected to declared role behaviour.

The classical literature on local governments emphasizes the importance of institutional settings when studying the ocupants of local officies. Concerning the importance of local autonomy, the Local Autonomy Index made by Ladner, Keuffer and Baldersheim (2016) allows us to capture the vertical nature of power distribution among local governments and upper tiers of governments (as a proxy for intergovernmental relations). This index includes a wide range of aspects of autonomy. As such, it is a comprehensive and discrete refinement of existing categorical typologies traditionally including local government discretion. On a similar vein, the integration of a horizontal perspective complements the picture of local autonomy. For this purpose, we will rely on the Mouritzen and Svara typology, which considers basically the power relations inside local polities by reflecting a balance or compromise among three organizational principles: layman rule, political leadership, and professionalism (focussing on executive-legislative relations). We argue that exclusivity may also be a feature of those occupying a strong and separate executive (as in the strong mayor and to a lesser extent in the collective type). The absence thereof (as in the committee or ceremonial type), will expectedly return more inclusive profiles for mayors, and then a bigger share of women in office. Since descriptive representation of women clearly has identified three categories of

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factors that explain cross-country and personal differences in percentages and characteristics of female politicians: institutional -electoral rules or how parties organise candidate selection-; socioeconomic -proportion of women in the workforce, the strength of the welfare state-; and cultural -beliefs about equality, and the social acceptance of women for representational and leadership roles-, scarce evidence exists on their impact in substantive representation. Childs and Krook (2009) offer a grouping of five categories of observations regarding links between descriptive and substantive representation, but for our purposes we retain two of them: identity and interests and policy-making.

To be further developed In any cas, recent works such as Kokkonen & Wängerud, 2017, are somehow pessimistic on the effect, on gender issues or priorities, of the the presence of numerous women in local governments. They state that numerous empirical studies show that female politicians globally tend to be more active than their male colleagues when it comes to placing gender equality policy on the political agenda, but at the same time, the election of a high number of women has comparatively small effects in legislative outputs. Their work begins by recognising that that political institutions matter, since usually represent masculine cultures. In our case, how mayoralty is conceived and exercised? Is there a common ground of behaviour, once at mayoralty? Which factors account for differences or commonalities?

3 Theoretical expectations What can we expect from the relationship between gender and mayoralty? As commented above, descriptive and substantive representation are quite contingent upon individual, institutional and even cultural variables. In a nutshell, we expect gender differences to be stronger on issues related to “descriptive” representation rather than issues related “substantive” representation, due to institutional constraints.

From this puzzling phenomenon, involving institutional issues (typologies of local governments and intergovernmental relations) and individual characteristics, we build a set of two main hypotheses that aim to disentangle several aspects of these relationships affecting differences in perception by gender.

As we have stated, gender in mayoralties has been a scarce object of study, and the elites’ perception over the role of mayors froma a gender perpective deserves academic

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attention. From the previous section, we can establish that differences between how women foresee their duties and commitment at office, and how women effectively act once in office can be relevant. Our basic concern is to test whether the concrete institutional setting has an impact on how women mayors perceive local issues and duties. Precisely, our hypotheses are conceived as follow:

H1: Descriptive representation is still divided by gender.

H1a: Women are younger, better educated and with higher leftist party affiliation than men.

H1b: Strong personalization of politics (strong mayor forms) favours the presence of men.

H2: Substantive representation is blurred by institutional factors, rather than divided by gender.

Concerning the projected mayoral role:

H2a: Women hold more post materialistic values than men do.

H2b: Women give more importance to tasks more related to affairs of the community and local organisation than men do.

Concerning the declared mayoral role:

H2c: Women spend less hours in office.

H2d: Women give more room to contacts with citizens and proximity issues than men do.

4 Data and method The data used in this paper were gathered in a cross-national survey (The European Mayor II survey) which, like the previous ones promoted in the same network (Polleader network), aimed at contributing to fill a different, but altogether noticeable, empirical knowledge gap. Through these surveys the ambition was to offer to the research community a large background dataset, which would form a synthetic comparative picture, until then lacking, of the attitudes, values, policy priorities, role definition,

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leadership style, perception of self-influence, opinion on the main trends of reforms, leadership style of elected or non elected officials active in different levels of local government. In this long-term multi-step research effort converged progressively more than thirty national teams: they represented different disciplines, were involved in different scientific and civic debates, and were consequently interested in a large and differentiated set of themes, which were constrained in a necessarily limited set of common research questions. The large spectrum of themes the research dealt with offers multiple insights on gender differences in local leadership, obviously less systematically structured as could have be seen in a research grounded in a gender studies tradition, but perhaps for this same motive more open to the discovery. The present paper is based on data gathered in 29 countries, mostly between 2015 and 2016, through the distribution of a questionnaire addressed to the mayors (or their equivalent) of cities with more than 10 thousands inhabitants. The sample represents the 30.7 percent of the total population investigated by the survey. The successive surveys developed by this network, among mayors (two rounds), among local councillors, among different elected officials in charge in the second tier of local government, allowed an interesting series of controls of different classic hypotheses on gender differences in the political work (Bäck 2006, Alibegovic 2013, Navarro and Medir 2015). The intent is here to extend and renew the analytical attempt developed in 2015 (Navarro and Medir) from the data collected among the second tier officials, starting from the slightly different set of research questions included in the more recent survey and considering another of the many segments of the political class: the European mayors. Our main independent variable is gender, as it is reported from respondents to our survey, which enables us to distinguish between two independent groups based on the natural attribute of gender. In this sense, the analysis made in this paper states that ‘gender’ is an independent attribute of our objects of analysis (Mayors), which has an impact on their role, perceptions and visions. Our main analyses focus on differences between groups (men versus women), rather than cross-country comparisons. The general null hypothesis operates under the theoretical assumption that these groups are two different samples from the same population. Thus, the test reflects the likelihood that their values are equal. Our sample consists of 348 women out of 2396 mayors (12,9%) of cities bigger than 10.000 inhabitants, fairly distributed in our 29 countries, without remarcable deviant cases, as it is shown in Table 1, and ensuring that those countries that are more relevant (in number of cases) are not biased.

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Table1. % of Women Mayors in Europe and in our Sample Country Women Mayors Polleader Women N % % Sample Austria 6.7 11,8 4 Belgium 12.7 17 19 Cyprus 0 0 0 Czech Republic 4.2 14,8 9 Germany 10.4 10,2 58 Denmark 12.2 16,7 8 Greece 4.3 4,1 4 Spain 17.4 21,5 65 France 16 13,8 8 Croatia 7 10,7 3 Hungary 20.1 11,3 8 Iceland 25.7 20 1 Italy 13.4 14,9 26 Lithuania 5.3 10 3 Latvia 24.4 33 2 Netherlands 21.6 22,4 26 Norway 22.4 19 4 Poland 10.7 14,8 26 Portugal 7.8 10 7 Romania 4.3 12,5 1 Serbia 3.6 4 2 Sweden 37.1 34,1 45 Slovenia 7.5 4,2 1 Slovakia 23.3 5,9 1 United Kingdom 13.8 7,4 2 (England) Albania - 17,9 5 Ireland - 0 0 Israel - 0 0 Switzerland - 10 10

15.2

(EU-28) 12,9

348

Source: Polleader and European Institute for Gender Equality (2015)

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We will use a set of questions of our survey which can be classified in two main grups: socio-political background and values and perceptions. For the former we use the classical varibles such as age, education level, party membership (Yes/no), Ideology of the party (progressive/conservative), years of career…For the later we mainly use the number of hours devoted to mayoralty and to meet with citizens and groups, together with questions on: the prioritization of challenges on the mayor’s policy agenda, the main political aims for the next ten years (post-materialsit values) or the willingness to quit politics at the end of the mandate.

To offer more than mere descriptive results we stick to bivariate analysis based on independent t-test and chi-square tests. To test the basic assumption that no differences based on gender for a same population should exist, we mainly use the independent means t-test for continuous variables and Pearson’s chi-square test for categorical variables. The independent samples t-test compares the means of two sets of values from one continuous variable, while the Pearson’s Chi-square tests the idea of comparing the frequencies observed in certain categories to the frequencies one might expect to get in those categories by chance. When using this latter technique, we often recode the original variables in the database into a dichotomous one to create 2×2 matrices that easily capture the most important information for each indicator.

Nevertheless, to test our hypotheses, in multivariate models we fit two kinds of multilevel regression models, all of which have gender as the main independent variable. Depending on the nature of the dependent variable, we fit logistic regression models with binary response, or we fit linear regression models, when the dependent variable is continuous. In order to control the fixed country effects and the potential divergences caused by the distribution of the sample, we fit multilevel models with varying intercept by country.

5 Empirical results Even if the questionnaire was not designed to test gender differences, to explore specific dimensions of gender issues in council leaders is viable and worthwhile. Indeed, we could describe the path to leadership of women and men who passed through the selection process which is the premise of the local electoral competition; at the same time, we have the possibility to profile - if exists - a different approach to the mayor’s role based on gender. Firstly, we provide empirical bivariate evidence of such differences and commonalities. Secondly, we ofer a set of regression models aiming to precise the

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intertwined effects of personal traits and institutional settings in different European countries when the mayoralty is incarnated.

5.1 Bivariate evidence of a persistent gender gap Concerning the socio-political profile, we know that women in legislatures are not only fewer in number, they are also slightly different from men in some personal attributes. Our data evidence significant differences in the mayors’ personal details and confirm a solid finding reported in literature: on average, the elected women are younger and better educated than their male colleagues, as it is shown in table 2

Table 2. T-test and Chi-square test for age and education Age Higher Education Women's age (mean) 50.52 Women’s with higher education (%) 84.4 Men's age (mean) 52.32 Men’s with higher education (%) 77.8 Levene's test (p-value) 0.048 χ2 7.472 t-test -3.520 p-value 0.006 Difference in means -1.799 Fisher’s exact test 0.006 p-value 0.000 Odds ratio 0.647 R2 0.02 Source: The European Mayor II survey

The age difference between the two groups is statistically significant and it is about 1.8 years (with levene’s test being significant (0.048), equal variance is not assumed and the the mean difference due to gender is statistically significant (p-value is 0.001)). But women are not only younger, since the survey’s data confirm that they are better qualified than males: the 77.8 percent of the male have attained a university degree, versus the 84.4 percent of women.

This results could appear counter-intuitive. We might expect female councillors to be older than their male counterparts. Firstly, because they could be limited to enter in politics during their child-rearing period, considering that women are traditionally more likely to take more responsibility for the duties related to family’s care. Additionally, because the attested longer formation should postpone their entrance in politics. Indeed,

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if we look to the political career duration at the moment of the survey1 , the data show a career longer for men than for women. On average 2.5 years, a gap slightly larger than the age difference: the men enter in politics before than women. Our test shows a statistically significant relation between gender and career duration. However, the scarce literature on local politics and gender does already account for these differences in age, education and political career (Navarro & Medir, 2015 ).

By contrast, if our data on local leaders show that women mayors present differences on their personal background, they are not diversely ambitious than men. We considered the final question of the survey, investigating the mayors’ future plans and expectations on career progression: if they intended to continue or to quit from politics. Men and women are equally ambitious with respect to the prosecution of their career, our results on political ambition do not show any pattern of difference linked to gender (χ2 = 2.171, p>.141), suggesting similar levels of expectations for professional advancement for both genders.

Table 3. Chi-square test for political ambition Quit and continue after mandate Women declared to continue in politics (%) 70.6 Men declared to continue in politics (%) 66.1 χ2 2.171 p-value 0.141 Fisher’s exact test 0.151 Odds ratio 1.230 Source: The European Mayor II survey

Following personal traits, institutions appear as a key factor to understand the presence of women at mayoralty. If we assessed different personal (gender) characteristics of mayors, which are (if any) the specific settings influencing the female presence in local politics? Could some external conditions favour the election of women more than others? Our data show a significant relation between gender and two different contextual factors: city size and electoral system. Moreover, we will check if the ideological self-placement

1 Calculated considering the years from the first appointed position the interviewees declared in the

questionnaire.

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of mayors shows differences by gender.

Considering a threshold of 30 thousands inhabitants as to divide the cities into two different categories, smaller and bigger ones, women have a statistically significant larger presence in the first category: the 15.3 percent compared to the 11.9 percent elected in “big” cities, as it can be shown in Table 4. Additionally, in the same Table, women are more numerous in cities were the electoral system is centred on the indirect election of the mayor: in this institutional context the proportion of women mayors is 20.4 percent, whereas in the direct election systems the data show only the 12.6 percent.

The party system, indeed, is still in the centre of the local political scene even if its importance is relatively diminished in comparison with the past. Parties are still playing a determinant role as gatekeepers, managing the selection process of politicians. Our data show a comparatively larger presence of partisan women. The party membership is higher between female mayors than between men (80.3% vs 77%) and only the 14.4 percent of women declare to have never joined a political party, while the male portion is slightly higher, the 15.2 percent.

An additional solid finding in the field is that women do better in left-wing parties (see e.g. Dahlerup and Leyenaard 2013; Wangnerud 2009). Although nowadays party ideology does not matter as much as it did in the past, leftist parties have traditionally been more likely to nominate women to safe places on their lists. The European Mayor II survey data highlight significant differences on the political orientation of males and females and confirm the trend reported in literature. We have used two variables present in the questionnaire in order to evaluate the political orientation of the respondents in the left-right axle. The first question is build as a scale, asking the mayors to collocate themselves in a range going from 0 (left) to 10 (right). The second question investigated directly the partisan affiliation of the respondents, the later recodification according to Andersson et al.’s work (2014) allowed us to differentiate between left and right wing parties. Females declared to side themselves more on the left than men did. This is true for the self- placement of the interviewees but the same trend line is confirmed also when we look at party’s membership and the consequent collocation into bigger political families. Women are 1.61 times more enrolled in left parties than men.

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Table 4. Mayors by cities dimension and electoral system (Chi-square test) City size Electoral system Women mayor in small cities (%) 15.3 Women mayor in direct election system (%) 20.4 Women mayor in big cities (%) 11.9 Women mayor in indirect election system (%) 12.6 χ2 4.791 χ2 22.380 p-value 0.029 p-value 0.000 Fisher’s exact test 0.030 Fisher’s exact test 0.000 Odds ratio 1.337 Odds ratio 1.788 Source: The European Mayor II survey

Table 5. Women in left-wing parties Women member of left-wing parties (%) 55.5

Men's member of left-wing parties (%) 43.5

χ2 10.769

p-value 0.001

Fisher’s exact test 0.001

Odds ratio 1.615

Source: The European Mayor II survey

Our bivariate data analyses helps to profile a picture where the contextual and institutional variables play an important role in gender dynamics, even more than the role played by the personal characteristics of candidates. It is more likely to find a woman mayor if we look at a small town, into a system ruled by an indirect election and between the members of left oriented parties. The comparatively limited presence of women as leader of bigger cities, where they are still encountering more difficulties in achieving office, reminds the persistence of social barriers and prejudices that penalise women in attaining the mayoral leadership. In this sense, our findings are in line with most of the existing literature on descriptive representation of mayors.

If we turn our attention to more substantive representation issues, we uphold the assumption that women have certain interests in common is a shared premise in studies on women in representative bodies. So, we expect that women will tend, compared to men, to show different values and attitudes as a group and to share common interests and policy priorities.

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Related to the effective exercise of the role (declared mayoral behaviour), our survey asked for the total amount of hours devoted to the mayoralty and also the division of the working time accorded to each daily tasks. In both cases our data do not show significant differences in terms of time. Men and females declare a similar amount of time dedicated to carry out the tasks requested by the office. No statistically significant differences were reported in the amount of hours declared by mayors, not even considering the single tasks one by one (see table in Annex).

In analysing the political tasks of mayors2, the data reveals a common trend linking men and women in the interpretation of the role (see figure in annex): all the interviewees assigned on average higher priority to the same tasks and the analysis does not show significant differences on these dimensions based on gender. Although the tasks considered more important are the same for men and women, the data show a diffused propensity of women to assign higher values also to the tasks marked with lower priority: they are less resolute in the distinction while men are cleaner in separating the duties they consider primary from the others.

Since a substantive difference is not observable in the day-to-day behaviour of European mayors, a more marked distance could concern the long-period inspiration of their action. In a fisrt step we analyse the main political aims for the next ten years, asking mayors to choose two top priorities from a list of four items easily related to “materialistic values” and “postmaterialistic values”. In order to better emphasize the trend line of the answers, we organized them by logical affinity in the two mentioned groups: one characterised by materialistic values (‘maintain a high rate of economic growth’ and ‘maintain order’), and the other by post-materialistic values (‘give people more say in the decisions of the government’ and ‘protect freedom of speech’). The data show a comparatively marked tendency of women towards the latter, even if the priorities regarding economic growth and security issues represent the first choice of all the mayors interviewed, showing no statistical differences among both groups of items.

However, further investigating on the projected role behavior, our data allow to trace a more distinct picture when we consider the political actions that more than others characterize the mayors’ political agenda. In the survey there was a question investigating the challenges the interviewees have to cope with, and the priority their 2 The question was composed by a battery of 13 items. For each one to the interviewees were asked to

assign a number as a measure of the importance of the proposed items in a scale of 5 grades (from ‘Not a task of a mayor’ to ‘Of utmost importance’).

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assigned to each one of them. The bivariate analysis presents statistically significant differences based on gender in four items (out of nine).

Women assigned comparatively lower values to the item referring to the general and wide transformation of their cities in more attractive places, while they seem to be more attentive to face the concrete problems of their local community (see table three in annex). Reducing the social differences (by the implementation of social policies), improving the internal social cohesion of the community, but also raising the efficiency of the administrative machine, are the lines of political action with more priority for women. Indeed, social cohesion and reduction of inequalities are differently ranked by men and women, however, those variables could potentially be collinear with a left-oriented agenda, so the leftist political inspiration that may characterize the female part of the sample may have an impact too. However, differences are present in 4 out of 9 topics, whereas similar visions are present in 5 items, where differences between men and women perceptions are indistinguishable.

The overall bivariate picture offers evidence for considering the existence of a gender gap in the acces and road to mayoralty, together with slight differences in priorities. Nevertheless, a less clear picture emerges when tasks and priorities are considered. To have more robust approach to those issues, we propose a multivariate analysis controlling for the main institutional variables affecting local government’s performance and functioning.

5.2 Modelling the gender GAP at mayoralty: from projected to declared role behaviour.

Since politics, and particularly mayors’ operating room does not occur in bivariate environments, we launch a pack of multilevel analysis accounting for the main individual and contextual/institutional variables that might drive Mayors’ perceptions.

Concerning the personal traits such as age and education, results in table 7 offer different explanations of the impact of gender in both dependent variables. In case of age, even finding significant differences in age between men and women, once controlled by country and the concrete institutional setting in which mayor’s act, no effect of gender is reported. On the contrary, in the educational dimension, gender maintain its explanatory power, even controlling by country and institutional settings.

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Table 7. Personal traits of Mayors Dependent variable:

Age High

Education linear generalized

linear mixed-effects mixed-

effects Male 0.814 -0.667***

(0.587) (0.188) Local Autonomy Index 0.156 -0.100*

(0.194) (0.051) Population (logged) 0.660** 0.376***

(0.269) (0.088) Committee leader form -2.770 0.187

-2.247 (0.588) Strong mayor form 0.517 -0.153

-1.189 (0.324) Strong elected candidate -2.868 0.958*

-1.882 (0.493) Ideology (0-10) -0.263*** 0.023

(0.099) (0.029) Constant 44.477*** 0.019

-5.641 -1.604 Observations 1,945 1,942 Log Likelihood -6,997.230 -946.959 Akaike Inf. Crit. 14,014.460 1,911.918 Bayesian Inf. Crit. 14,070.190 1,962.062 Note: *p<0.1; **p<0.05; ***p<0.01

In relation with the political attributes of Mayors, this is to say, years of career and the ideological dimension of parties, gender matters. We show the effect of the belonging to a left-wing party in figure 1, but not political career, since the model is only N=302 (In any case the table “personal traits” can be found in annex).

Figure 1: Probability of belonging to a left-wing party

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When it comes to analyse the differences on the assigned priority to address some challenges that municipalities are facing, this is to say, how important are those items in the mayorals agenda (projected mayoral role), no effects are reported due to gender, except for the issue “to improve the integration of ethnic, religious or cultural minorities and emphasize diversity and tolerance in the local community”, which can be found on figure 2, which is significant only at p<0.1 (the complete table can be found on the Annex).

Figure 1: Difference in integration

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Similar results appear when when we turn our attention to the hours devoted to mayoralty and the number of hours devoted to meetings with diferent actors and stakeholders. Only “public debates and conferences outside the Town Hall” appear as crossed by a gender bias, in this case men devoting less time to this commitement compared to women (see complete results in annex).

Finally, our models do not support gender differences by the number of hours devoted to mayoralty (nither in a multivariate approach), nor to the divide between materialistic and post-materialist values, neither to the willigness of quiting or continuing in politics at the end of the mandate (men and women are equally ambitious).

6. Discusion This is a preliminary and exploratory work of an original dataset on Mayors perceptions across Europe. Our main provisional findings seem to reinforce the idea of a strong selection rocedure and a strong impact of gender in subjects related to descriptive

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representation. Leaving aside the question of number of women at mayoralty (which can not be addressed with our data), as we expected, descriptive representation is still divided by gender. In our sample, women are younger, better educated and with higher leftist party affiliation than men. All those findngs are in line with the scarce previous research on the field. We can also clearly consider that the presence of women is more important in those systems of local government where strong personalization of politics (strong mayor forms) is not in place. Most of the results emphasize the importance of the countries and municipalities with strong and personalised forms of election and leadership.

However, the main findings of our work are related to matters on substantive representation. We hypothesize that the nature of mayoralty -the institutional postion of mayors - would blurr the gender gap that the literature has widey demonstrated on other policy arenas. We made a theoretical distinction between projected role (a matter of how mayors foresee their position and role), and declared role (what effectively mayors declare they do).

We found no evidence for strong differences in values (postmaterialistc vs materialistic ones), neither to assigning priority to tasks related to build community. So, no relevant differences appear in their projected role. In a similar vein, concerning the declared mayoral role, we found men and women spending the same number of hours at office and declaring the same hours to meet with citizens and stakeholders.

From our survey, it clearly appears a relevant difference in social background and political careers, but not on policy orientations (or substantive representation). From the literature -not based on local politicians- we may expect the contrary. Therefore, women and men seem to not differ substantially when holding mayoralty because the institutional setting of local governments -and specially its closeness to citizens and their problems-, makes elites behave and think in more homogeneous ways.

In other words, from regional and national parliaments it is quite easy to "lobby" for women's issues, since problems are "far", and no concrete issues are addressed from assemblies. By the contrary, on Local governments day-to-day operation, solving concrete and identifiable problems is the usual rule, thus limiting the emergence of a general gender perspective. Indeed, we can identify a sort of "general" representation required to mayors, while MPs, regional councillors, second tier councillors or other politicians can specialize on one topic, leave their creativity find concreteness in one field.

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Mayors, Region Presidents, Prime Ministres, not. And the literature interested in gender differences (on national and local leaders) doesn't focus on these special figures.

We know that there is an overlapping, since is difficult to separate a leftist agenda from a “female” agenda. Indeed, since we do not consider the network and leadership styles, we assume that perhaps under this profile theyere must exist differences (corresponding or not to the literature).

What can explain persisting differences in the descriptive representation, but not in the substantive representation? Probably self-selection of women at mayoralty matters a lot: the profile of women that do reach mayoralty (like those women that reach prime minister or singular offices) is probably more masculinized than other counterparts. If insitutions and power are still masculine, to reach it, it is worthy to behave and to think as a man.

References

Alibegovic, Jurlina Alibegovic, Suncana Slijepcevic and Josip Sipic. 2013. “The gender gap among local representatives: a potential for local development”, in Björn Egner, David Sweeting and Pieter-Jan Klok (eds.), Local councillors in Europe. Wiesbaden: Springer VS: 181-202. Beck S.A. (1991), “Rethinking Municipal Governance: Gender distinctions on local councils, in

Dodson (ed.), Gender and Policy Making: Studies of women in office, New Brunswick: Center for American Women and Politics

Bratton, K. and Ray, L. (2002) ‘Descriptive representation, policy outcomes and municipal day-care coverage in Norway’,

Dodson, D.L. (2006) , The impact of women in congress, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gilligan C. (1982), In a different Voice: Pshychological Theory and Women’s Development,

Cambridge mass.: Harvard University Press Hamidullah M. F., Ricucci N.M., Pandey S. K. (2015), Women in City Hall: Gender Dimensions of

Managerial Values, Americann Review of Public Administration, 45(3), pp. 247-262 Kokkonen, A & Wägnerund, L. (2017), Women’s presence in Politics and Male Politicians Commitment to Gender Equality in Politics: Evidence from 290 Swedish Local Councils, Journal of Women, Politics & Society, 38:2, 199-220. Mansbridge J. (2003)“Rethinking Representation”, The American Political Science Review, 97 (4), pp. 515-528 Mateo-Diaz, M. (2005) , Representing women? Female legislators in West European parliaments,

Colchester: ECPR Press

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Meier K.J., O’Toole L. J., Goerdel H. T. (2006), Management activity and program performance: Gender as management capital, Public Administration Review, 66, 24-36

Navarro C., Medir L., 2015, “Patterns of gender representation in councils at the second tier of local government. Assessing the gender gap in an unexplored institutional setting”, in Bertrana X., Egner B., Heinelt H., Policy Making at the Second Tier of Local Government in Europe. What is happening in Provinces, Counties, Départements and Landkreise in the on-going re-scaling of statehood?, London: Routledge

Norris, P. and Lovenduski, J. (1995). Political recruitment: gender, race and class in the British parliament, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Phillips, A. (1995), The politics of presence, Oxford: Oxford University Press Pini B., Mc Donald P. (eds.), Women and representation in local government: international case

studies, New York London: Routledge Rinehart S.T. (1991), “Do Women make a difference?Substance, style and perception, in Dodson

(ed.), Gender and Policy Making: Studies of women in office, New Brunswick: Center for American Women and Politics

Saward M., The representative Claim, Oxford: Oxford University Press Thomas, S. and Wilcox, C. (2005), Women and elected office: past, present, and future, Oxford:

Oxford University Press Vanderleeuw J.M., Sandovici M.E., Jarmon C.A. (2011), Women City Leaders and Postmaterislist

Values: Gender Differences in Economic Development Priorities, Journal of Women, Politics and Policy, 32, pp. 211-236

Wangnerud, L. and Sundell, A. (2012) ‘Do politics matter? Women in Swedish local elected assemblies 1970–2010 and gender equality in outcomes’, European Political Science Review, 4, 1: 97–120

Young I. M. (2000), Inclusion and democracy, Oxford: Oxford University Press

Annex Mayors time devoted to office’s duties

Gender Mean Std. Deviation

How many hours do you on average spend each week in your activity as a mayor: women 58.60 16.06

men 58.59 20.07 How many hours do you spend each week in the following activities?

meetings with council and executive board women 6.18 4.74

men 5.87 4.81

meetings with administrative staff women 9.41 6.16

men 9.25 9.65

meetings with citizens, groups, etc women 8.66 6.62

men 8.88 7.34

ceremonial and representative functions in the Town Hall (weddings, register activities, receptions…) women 4.85 3.86

men 4.90 8.43

public debates and conferences outside the Town Hall women 4.20 3.30

men 4.04 3.39

Field visits (official and unofficial) in the city women 6.27 5.99

men 6.45 5.37

meetings with authorities from other cities women 3.13 2.41

men 3.23 2.95

meetings with authorities from the region, national government women 2.75 2.80

men 2.89 2.90

individual preparation for the duties of the mayor women 9.27 6.61

men 8.61 6.32

political party meetings women 3.06 2.87

men 3.03 3.50

Source: The European Mayor II survey

2

Mayor’s tasks ordered by assigned priority

2,102,462,49

2,742,77

2,852,90

3,053,113,113,16

3,443,53

2,172,28

2,432,632,67

2,752,83

2,953,133,133,16

3,253,42

0,00 0,50 1,00 1,50 2,00 2,50 3,00 3,50 4,00

To guide the staff in day to day activities To implement the programme of his/her political party/movement

To manage the implementation of his/her personal policy choicesTo defend and promote the influence of local authorities in the political…

To set goals for transforming the administrative structureTo foster the co-operation with the neighbouring municipalities

To help citizens resolve complaints with the municipal governmentTo ensure the correctness of the political-administrative process

To attract resources from external sources (European/national/regional… To encourage new projects in the community

To represent the city to the outside world To create a vision for his/her city

To ensure the quality of local services

How important do you think the following tasks are?

Male Female

3

Low MaxEqual variances assumed

21,225 ,000 -2,694 ,007 -,107 -,185 -,029 Women 4,51

Equal variances Not assumed

-2,364 ,019 -,107 -,196 -,018 Men 4,61

Equal variances assumed

4,555 ,033 3,827 ,000 ,181 ,088 ,273 Women 4,48

Equal variances Not assumed

4,177 ,000 ,181 ,096 ,266 Men 4,30

Equal variances assumed

1,958 ,162 ,634 ,526 ,032 -,068 ,132 Women 3,99

Equal variances Not assumed

,611 ,541 ,032 -,072 ,136 Men 3,95

Equal variances assumed

7,659 ,006 -,104 ,917 -,006 -,112 ,101 Women 3,93

Equal variances Not assumed

-,097 ,923 -,006 -,120 ,109 Men 3,94

Equal variances assumed

7,078 ,008 2,137 ,033 ,107 ,009 ,205 Women 4,09

Equal variances Not assumed

2,064 ,040 ,107 ,005 ,208 Men 3,98

Equal variances assumed

10,401 ,001 -2,053 ,040 -,116 -,227 -,005 Women 3,47

Equal variances Not assumed

-1,878 ,061 -,116 -,238 ,005 Men 3,59

Equal variances assumed

,982 ,322 1,761 ,078 ,081 -,009 ,171 Women 4,45

Equal variances Not assumed

1,809 ,071 ,081 -,007 ,168 Men 4,37

Equal variances assumed

,958 ,328 -,069 ,945 -,003 -,089 ,083 Women 4,24

Equal variances Not assumed

-,067 ,947 -,003 -,091 ,085 Men 4,24

Equal variances assumed

7,121 ,008 3,594 ,000 ,205 ,093 ,318 Women 3,81

Equal variances Not assumed

3,727 ,000 ,205 ,097 ,314 Men 3,60

To address politico-administrative issues, e.g. in order to improve relations with citizens, better and more efficient services, securing integrity and fighting corruption

To preserve the local identity and the locality’s traditional lifestyle

To stimulate economic growth and employment

To improve communal infrastructure, communication and transport

To improve the integration of ethnic, religious or cultural minorities and emphasize diversity and tolerance in the local community

Mean Difference Mean

scoresGender

To secure public safety, fight crime and secure law and order

Levene's test T-test

F Sig. tSig.

(bilateral)

95% confidence intervalfor differences

To increase the attractiveness of the municipality as a place of business and a place for people to live in, by regeneration and development projects, new cultural facilities, improvement of the aesthetics of the city

To develop social policies to secure adequate housing, health care, education , public transport facilities and take care of the needs of vulnerable groups (the elderly, the young, the unemployed

To protect the natural environment and secure the responsible use of natural resources

4

Political traits Dependent variable: Member of leftist party Political

career (years) generalized linear linear mixed-effects mixed-effects

Male -0.400** 2.751*

(0.181) (-1.637) Age 0.006 0.382***

(0.007) (0.063) Local Autnomy Index 0.135** 0.208

(0.068) (0.240) Population (log) 0.074 -1.313*

(0.084) (0.782) Comittee leader form -1.086 1.106

-1.012 (-6.070) Strong Mayor form -0.318 4.662*

(0.332) (-2.710) Strong elected candidate 0.443 -5.721

(0.634) (-3.829) Constant -4.092** 0.470

-1.940 -10.504 Observations 1,244 302 Log Likelihood -782.684 -1,089.511 Akaike Inf. Crit. 1,583.369 2,199.023 Bayesian Inf. Crit. 1,629.503 2,236.127 Note: *p<0.1; **p<0.05; ***p<0.01

5

Challenges (Q3) Dependent variable: A3_1 A3_2 A3_3 A3_4 A3_5 A3_6 A3_7 A3_8 A3_9 Male 0.026 -0.053 0.029 0.0005 0.003 -0.016 0.029 0.015 -0.086*

(0.041) (0.055) (0.048) (0.050) (0.048) (0.051) (0.055) (0.039) (0.049) No party member -0.009 -0.045 0.015 0.023 -0.073* -0.015 0.054 -0.013 -0.042

(0.035) (0.042) (0.040) (0.042) (0.040) (0.043) (0.043) (0.033) (0.042) secondary school 0.086 0.036 0.042 -0.092 -0.143* -0.053 -0.055 -0.049 -0.087

(0.073) (0.082) (0.077) (0.082) (0.076) (0.087) (0.081) (0.065) (0.090) V226university 0.058 -0.054 0.008 -0.225*** -0.130* -0.070 -0.117 -0.042 -0.113

(0.067) (0.073) (0.069) (0.074) (0.068) (0.078) (0.072) (0.059) (0.082) V224 0.0003 0.0004 0.004** 0.002 0.004** 0.002 -0.001 -0.002 0.002

(0.002) (0.002) (0.002) (0.002) (0.002) (0.002) (0.002) (0.001) (0.002) lai2014 0.001 -0.016* -0.023* 0.002 -0.020 -0.024* -0.011 -0.002 -0.009

(0.013) (0.009) (0.012) (0.014) (0.014) (0.014) (0.011) (0.008) (0.012) direct election 0.128 -0.129 0.039 0.036 0.141 0.105 -0.071 -0.098 0.151

(0.128) (0.097) (0.118) (0.136) (0.132) (0.137) (0.109) (0.082) (0.121) committee leader 0.041 0.354*** 0.132 -0.071 0.096 0.044 0.145 0.091 0.454***

(0.152) (0.109) (0.139) (0.167) (0.164) (0.163) (0.133) (0.097) (0.138) strong mayor -0.075 0.280*** 0.095 0.072 0.074 0.076 0.121 0.101 0.088

(0.083) (0.078) (0.080) (0.088) (0.084) (0.093) (0.081) (0.062) (0.093) Population (log) 0.042** 0.008 -0.0001 0.001 0.003 -0.015 0.011 -0.010 0.027

(0.019) (0.024) (0.021) (0.023) (0.022) (0.023) (0.027) (0.018) (0.023) Constant 4.081*** 3.987*** 3.819*** 3.502*** 3.818*** 3.952*** 3.903*** 4.033*** 3.168***

(0.392) (0.377) (0.393) (0.436) (0.433) (0.445) (0.427) (0.298) (0.403) Observations 1,945 956 1,358 1,358 1,373 1,589 890 1,153 1,542 Log Likelihood -1,830.284 -780.487 -1,227.025 -1,300.254 -1,236.109 -1,657.248 -727.133 -723.733 -1,559.662 Akaike Inf. Crit. 3,686.568 1,586.974 2,480.050 2,626.508 2,498.217 3,340.495 1,480.266 1,473.466 3,145.324 Bayesian Inf. Crit. 3,759.017 1,650.190 2,547.829 2,694.287 2,566.139 3,410.316 1,542.552 1,539.118 3,214.755

Note: *p<0.1; **p<0.05; ***p<0.0

6

7

Hours (Q9) Dependent variable: B9_v17 B9_v18 B9_v19 B9_v20 B9_v21 B9_v22 B9_v23 B9_v24 B9_v25 B9_v26 Male -0.277 -0.430 0.041 -0.299 -0.384* 0.035 0.237 -0.060 -0.705 -0.079

(0.265) (0.665) (0.437) (0.578) (0.232) (0.350) (0.197) (0.206) (0.442) (0.223) No party member 0.148 -0.833 -1.353*** -0.564 -0.203 -0.428 -0.065 -0.276 -0.753* -0.235

(0.239) (0.576) (0.385) (0.497) (0.203) (0.309) (0.174) (0.188) (0.388) (0.227) secondary school 0.061 1.861 0.920 0.621 -0.336 -0.044 -0.345 -0.190 -0.154 0.313

(0.497) -1.241 (0.795) -1.086 (0.428) (0.650) (0.353) (0.386) (0.811) (0.434) V226university 0.051 1.209 -0.364 -0.047 -0.355 -0.148 -0.304 0.018 -0.348 0.193

(0.457) -1.141 (0.724) (0.993) (0.393) (0.595) (0.320) (0.355) (0.744) (0.403) V224 0.007 0.008 -0.034** 0.029 0.011 -0.045*** -0.016** -0.017** 0.006 -0.014

(0.010) (0.026) (0.017) (0.022) (0.009) (0.014) (0.008) (0.008) (0.017) (0.009) lai2014 0.073 -0.003 -0.220 -0.002 -0.044 -0.139 -0.031 -0.111* 0.205** -0.126

(0.092) (0.116) (0.164) (0.087) (0.072) (0.103) (0.047) (0.064) (0.089) (0.112) direct election -0.167 1.236 2.245 0.272 1.136 1.489 -0.066 0.756 -0.584 0.282

(0.904) -1.278 -1.568 (0.984) (0.717) -1.030 (0.488) (0.641) (0.968) -1.020 committee leader 2.131** 2.095 -0.500 -0.971 1.135 -0.996 1.051* 0.512 -2.297** 0.759

-1.063 -1.367 -1.891 -1.018 (0.839) -1.211 (0.553) (0.737) -1.048 -1.262 strong mayor 0.320 1.541 0.972 1.207 -0.114 0.097 0.324 0.401 -0.520 -0.242

(0.601) -1.109 (0.919) (0.877) (0.488) (0.710) (0.373) (0.458) (0.822) (0.503) Population (log) 0.585*** 0.139 0.428** 0.707*** 0.406*** 0.572*** -0.026 0.056 -0.042 0.008

(0.126) (0.304) (0.203) (0.267) (0.108) (0.162) (0.090) (0.096) (0.204) (0.107) Constant -2.591 4.654 9.366** -4.372 0.039 5.335* 4.847*** 5.285*** 5.733* 6.291**

-2.708 -4.789 -4.682 -3.935 -2.209 -3.229 -1.612 -1.948 -3.382 -2.961 Observations 1,766 1,823 1,881 1,751 1,712 1,821 1,786 1,622 1,765 1,539 Log Likelihood -4,905.137 -6,724.177 -6,187.889 -6,201.707 -4,467.557 -5,565.260 -4,408.803 -4,017.843 -5,781.361 -3,914.444 Akaike Inf. Crit. 9,836.273 13,474.350 12,401.780 12,429.410 8,961.115 11,156.520 8,843.605 8,061.686 11,588.720 7,854.887 Bayesian Inf. Crit. 9,907.468 13,545.960 12,473.790 12,500.500 9,031.905 11,228.110 8,914.946 8,131.775 11,659.910 7,924.293 Note: *p<0.1; **p<0.05; ***p<0.01

8

9