Municipalities should make it a priority if it turns out that the male-female ratio in their municipal councils is skewed, believes party leader of CDA Maastricht Gabriëlle Heine.
That is what Heine tells Friday evening in L1mburg Central.
‘Big step’
Nowhere in the Netherlands are there on average so few female councilors as in Limburg, according to a survey by the Stem op een Vrouw foundation.
Party chairman Heine is shocked by the research results. “I think the step to enter politics is still too big for many women,” she says. “It’s not always easy to find people at all, especially women.” There are ten female councilors in Maastricht’s municipal council, which is less than a third of the seats (29.4 percent).
City Councils
According to Stichting Stem op een Vrouw, more diversity in a municipal council contributes to a good quality of democracy and to confidence in politics. In the whole of the Netherlands, only seven of the 345 municipalities have more female councilors than male ones. In Limburg, the municipality of Gennep is at the bottom of the list. Two women are part of the 16-member city council (12.5 percent). There is still a lot of ‘work to be done’ to bring more balance in the male-female ratio, believes Heine.
Also read: Limburg has fewest female councilors in the Netherlands
‘Nonsense argument’
According to the party chairman, the fact that quality should take precedence over quantity in the selection of councilors is a ‘nonsense argument’. “I don’t believe that men are more suited to be representatives of the people.” Heine suspects that the skewed male-female ratio in the municipal councils is precisely due to the fact that women generally take on more care tasks than men.