1,480 women entered the race for last Sunday’s municipal elections, representing around 38.6% of all candidates. However, women were selected for just 337 out of the 1,112 possible seats on municipal councils, meaning nearly two-thirds of female candidates were unsuccessful.
Non-Luxembourgish candidates also faced challenges with selection, with just 20 of the 379 candidates succeeding in gaining seats.
Less than a quarter of female candidates were elected, with just 22.7% gaining seats.
However, women emerged victorious in 14 municipalities, most notable of whom was Lydie Polfer, who extended her mandate as mayor of Luxembourg City with 15,212 votes overall. Female candidates also scored highly in Bertrange, Bech, Contern, Dippach, Echternach, Larochette, Lorentzweiler, Putscheid, Rambrouch, Rosport-Mompach, Sanem, Tandel and Waldbillig.
The municipal councils in the capital, Schieren and Biwer boasted the highest proportion of women, with each council having 55.56% female representation.
Analysing the distribution of mandates across districts, variations can be observed between the northern region and the rest of the country.
In the northern municipalities, women secured less than a quarter of mandates (23.58%), while the southern councils saw women receiving slightly over one-third of the mandates (34.88%). The central districts (32.35%) and the eastern districts (31.63%) had slightly lower representation, with just under a third of seats won by women in each region.
In a significant development, these municipal elections marked the first occasion where non-Luxembourgish citizens were not required to have residency to stand as candidates.
A total of 379 candidates with foreign passports, accounting for 4.2 percent of all candidates, stood in the election, but just 20 candidates prevailed. This represents just 1.7% of all seats for non-Luxembourgish citizens.
By district, non-Luxembourgish candidates won six mandates in the east, five in the north, four in the south and six in the centre. The seats are evenly divided between majority and proportional representation municipalities.
