BRIEF LITERATURE REVIEW - Gender norms and women’s representation in local politics across the world

To offer some comparison to the global picture of national-level politics, UN Women and The Inter-Parliamentary Union’s (IPU) reports and datasets on women in national politics were In the future, other conceptualisations and words to capture women’s political representation and consulted. [...] government than in Women’s local government representation is highest in Central and Southern Asia (41%) and Europe and Northern national parliaments; America (35%), and lowest in Western Asia and Northern but, in the majority Africa (18%) (Berevoescu and Ballington, 2021). [...] 18 Gender norms and women’s representation in local politics across the world Differences in the prevalence of discriminatory gender norms and egalitarian values likely explain some of the geographic variation of women’s local government representation. [...] For instance, the Association of Women Councillors of Bolivia was set up in response to cases of harassment experienced by councillors; it develops and supports women leaders in Bolivia and has been influential in the implementation of gender quota legislation and in addressing violence and harassment against women in politics (Ceciarini, 2021; Restrepo Sanín, 2022a). [...] How do gender norms, in their intersections with other forms of oppression and marginalisation, shape local political representation and institutions? Due to insufficient data on the experiences of women in their diversity, quantitative and qualitative studies and supportive programming and action research are required to better understand and address the experiences of marginalised women in local.