EUROPE’S CAPITAL CITIES WITH WOMEN MAYORS
Only 12 per cent of Europe’s capital cities are governed by female mayors
European capital cities’ longest-serving women mayors, from left: Lydie Polfer, Mayor of Luxembourg City since 2013; Anne Hidalgo, Mayor of Paris since 2014; Femke Halsem, Mayor of Amsterdam since 2018
January 2025: Women are politically grossly underrepresented in Europe’s economically, politically and culturally most powerful municipal centres. Only six cities (12%) of the Continent’s 50 capitals have women at the helm. The best-known European capital city mayor is Anne Hidalgo, the Mayor of Paris, who was first elected in 2024 after 13 years as First Deputy Mayor of the French capital. Other European capitals with women mayors include Stockholm, Amsterdam, Oslo, Skopje and Luxembourg City.
Women play a more prominent part in Europe’s 24 most important ‘second cities’. Some 25 per cent are led by female mayors, among them Rotterdam, Cologne and Strasbourg. First elected as Mayor of Zurich in 2009, Corine Mauch is the longest-serving female mayor of a major European city.
Politically, the majority of the women mayors of Europe’s most important cities belong to left-of-centre parties or pursue centre-left and green policies.
Of the 12 women mayors listed below, only the mayors of Oslo and Stockholm were preceded by a female mayor.
Europe’s capital cities with women mayors
FRANCE
Paris (2.1 million)
Anne Hidalgo
Mayor since 2014, preceded by a male mayor.
Party / Politics: Socialist Party, centre-left
Notes: Born in 1959 in Spain. Law degree from the Jean Moulin University in Lyon. From 1982 to 2011, she worked in the French civil service, focusing on labour and human resources. During Bertrand Delanöe’s term as Mayor of Paris from 2001 to 2014, Hidalgo was first deputy mayor. She was elected Mayor in May 2014 after her boss decided not to run for a third term. During her second term, Hidalgo initiated several ground-breaking policies, such as the removal of half of Pari’s car parking spaces. In the summer of 2024, she oversaw the Summer Olympics. While Hidalgo remained fairly popular as Mayor of Paris, her candidacy for the French presidency ended in disaster. She came tenth out of twelve candidates, with 1.75 per cent of the vote, the lowest result ever for a Socialist candidate in a French presidential election. In November 2024, Anne Hidalgo announced that she would not run for a third term. (Further reading: French women mayors)
SWEDEN
Stockholm (985,000)
Karin Wanngård
Mayor since 2022, preceded by a female mayor
Party / Politics: Social Democratic Party, centre-left
Notes: Born 1975. Leader of Stockholm’s Social Democrats since 2011. Mayor of Stockholm from 2014 to 2018. Member of the Eurocities Executive Committee.
NETHERLANDS
Amsterdam (934,000)
Femke Halsem
Mayor since 2018, preceded by a male mayor
Party / Politics: GroenLinks, Green, centre-left
Notes: Born 1966. Degree in social sciences from Utrecht University (1993). Authored a book on crime and law enforcement (1995). Editor of De Helling, a research magazine by the Dutch Green Party (1996). She left the Labour Party in 1997, citing authoritarianism in the party. She represented the GroenLinks as a member of the House of Representatives, the Dutch parliament, from 1998 to 2011. Halsem published her first political memoirs in 2016, two years before she was appointed Mayor of Amsterdam in June 2018. (Further reading: Dutch women mayors)
NORWAY
Oslo (710,000)
Anne Lindboe
Mayor since 2023, preceded by a female mayor
Party / Politics: Conservative Party, centre-right
Notes: Born 1971. Candidate of Medicine degree as well as MBA in Management. Norway’s Children’s Ombudsman from 2012 to 2018. As Children’s Ombudsman, she proposed that male circumcision should be replaced with a symbolic ritual. She, together with her counterparts from Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Iceland and Greenland, declared that ‘Circumcision without a medical indication on a person unable to provide informed consent conflicts with basic principles of medical ethics’. From 2018 to 2022, chair of the National Association of Private Kindergartens.
MACEDONIA
Skopje (527,000)
Danela Arsovska
Mayor since 2021, preceded by a male mayor
Party / Politics: New Alternative Party. Centrist with an emphasis on equal opportunities for all.
Notes: Born 1979. BA in law and MA in economics and executive education from the Universities of Oxford and Sheffield. Fluent in Macedonian, English and German. Panel member of the World Bank’s Centre for Settlement of International Disputes. In the 2021 municipal elections, she ran as an independent.
LUXEMBOURG
Luxembourg City (135,000)
Lydie Polfer
Mayor since 2013, preceded by a male mayor
Party / Politics: Democratic Party, Centrist
Notes: Born 1952. Former political appointments include Foreign minister, Deputy Prime Minister, and Member of the European Parliament. She was previously Mayor of Luxembourg City from 1982 to 1999. In December 2023, her administration banned begging in the centre of Luxembourg City.
Full list of Europe’s 50 capital cities. Cities in bold have women mayors
(In alphabetical order of cities)
Amsterdam, Netherlands; Andorra la Vella, Andorra; Ankara, Turkey; Astana, Kazakhstan; Athens, Greece; Baku, Azerbaijan; Belgrade, Serbia; Berlin, Germany; Bern, Switzerland; Bratislava, Slovakia; Brussels, Belgium; Bucharest, Romania; Budapest, Hungary; Chișinău, Moldova; Copenhagen, Denmark; Dublin, Ireland; Helsinki, Finland; Kyiv, Ukraine; Lisbon, Portugal; Ljubljana, Slovenia; London, United Kingdom; Luxembourg City, Luxembourg; Madrid, Spain; Minsk, Belarus; Monaco; Moscow, Russia; Nicosia, Cyprus; Oslo, Norway; Paris, France; Podgorica, Montenegro; Prague, Czech Republic; Reykjavík, Iceland; Riga, Latvia; Rome, Italy; San Marino, San Marino; Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina; Skopje, North Macedonia; Sofia, Bulgaria; Stockholm, Sweden; Tallinn, Estonia; Tbilisi, Georgia; Tirana, Albania; Vaduz, Liechtenstein; Valletta, Malta; Vatican City; Vienna, Austria; Vilnius, Lithuania; Warsaw, Poland; Yerevan, Armenia; Zagreb, Croatia
Europe’s most important ‘second cities’ with women mayors
GERMANY
Cologne (1.1 million)
Henriette Reker
Mayor since 2015, preceded by a male mayor
Party / Politics: Independent (politically centre)
Notes: Born November 1956, Studied law; Worked as a legal executive for a health insurer. She later worked for local governments in Gelsenkirchen and Cologne. She survived an assassination attempt shortly before the 2015 election. (Further reading: German women mayors)
NETHERLANDS
Rotterdam (665,000)
Carola Schouten
Mayor since 2024, preceded by a male mayor
Party / Politics: Christian Union, centrist
Notes: Born 1977. Degree in business administration from the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. From 2017 to 2024, one of three deputy prime ministers. From 2022 to 2024, Minister for Poverty Policy. (Further reading: Dutch women mayors)
POLAND
Gdansk (487,000)
Aleksandra Dulkiewicz
Mayors since 2019, preceded by a male mayor
Party / Politics: Centre-right
Notes: Born 1979. Law degree from the University of Gdansk. She also studied law at the University of Salzburg. From 2009 to 2014, she worked for the European Solidarity Centre, a library and museum devoted to the history of Solidarity and from 2014 to 2017 for the Gdansk Economic Development Agency. From 2017 to January 2019, she was deputy city mayor of Gdansk, responsible for the economic policy. After the assassination of her predecessor in 2019, she became acting mayor. She was elected in 2029 and re-elected in 2024. (Further reading: Polish women mayors)
SWITZERLAND
Zurich (416,000)
Corine Mauch
Party / Politics: Swiss Social Democrats, centre-left
Mayor since 2009, preceded by a male mayor
Notes: Born in 1960 in Iowa, USA. Degree in agricultural economics from ETH Zurich. MA in public administration. City councillor from 1999 to 2008. Renounced her US citizenship in 2013.
ITALY
Florence (368,000)
Sara Funaro
Party / Politics: Democratic Party, centre-left
Mayor since 2024, preceded by a male mayor
Notes: Born in 1976 in Florence. Degree in clinical psychology. Sara Funaro was elected mayor of Florence with the backing of a coalition of centre-left parties, including the Democratic Party (PD) and the 5-Star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle). The new mayor, previously a local PD councillor, won with over 60 per cent of the vote. Her opponent, German-born Eike Schmidt, was the former director of Florence's Uffizi Gallery. He ran nominally as an independent but was backed by Italy’s right-wing coalition government.
Sara Funaro dedicated her victory to her grandfather Piero Bargellini, who, as mayor, guided Florence through the devastation of the 1966 floods. She was the city councillor responsible for education, health, equal opportunities and integration under the city’s previous mayor, Dario Nardella. She also served as vice president of ASP Montedomini Social Services Association and was a board member of Fondazione Meyer, a charity supporting the city’s children’s hospital. Her campaign promises included equal opportunities for citizens, affordable housing, completion of the tramlines, urban greening and a safer city. (Further reading: Italian women mayors)
FRANCE
Strasbourg (292,000)
Jeanne Barseghian
Mayor since 2020, preceded by a male mayor
Party / Politics: The Ecologists, The Greens
Notes: Born 1980. Studied Franco-German lay at the Nanterre University in Paris, followed by environmental law studies at the Robert Schuman University in Strasbourg. In 2009, she became a founder member of a branch of the Sevak Association, an Armenian diaspora organisation. After she completed her legal studies, she advised companies, communities and local groups on economic, social and environmental issues. She worked on topics like the development of sustainable tourism along the Rhine, including for the Alsace Regional Council. She became mayor of Strasbourg in July 2020. This made her the first mayor of the city representing the green movement and also the first whose family was not from the Alsace Region. Barseghian also became the first vice president of the Eurométropole de Strasbourg. (Further reading: French women mayors)
Full list of Europe’s 24 most important ‘second cities’. Cities in bold have women mayors
(In alphabetical order of countries)
France: Bordeaux, Lyon, Marseille, Strasbourg
Germany: Cologne, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich
Italy: Milan, Naples, Turin, Florence
Netherlands: Rotterdam, The Hague
Poland: Gdansk
Portugal: Porto
Russia: St Petersburg;
Spain: Barcelona
Switzerland: Zurich, Geneva
Turkey: Istanbul
United Kingdom: Birmingham, Edinburgh, Manchester (Three of Britain's regions have women mayors)
* The research was carried out in December 2024 and January 2025
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