At the local elections, which will take place on Sunday, we will vote for mayors who lead over the 212 Slovenian municipalities for the next four years. There are a total of 588 male candidates and 100 female candidates for mayor. 22,313 candidates are also running for seats in the city and municipal councils, among them 10,198 women.

What’s the current situation, before Sunday’s election? Only 16 municipalities are headed by females, which is 7,6 percent of all the mayoral positions in the country. Meanwhile, in the city and municipal councils there are 1,069 women (31,8 percent) and 2,296 men (68,2 percent). Although the percentage of females during the 2014 local elections was higher compared to the year 2010, figures indicate that women still find it difficult to enter into local politics – even more difficult than entering into politics on a national level. When entering into politics females face different obstacles and stereotypes.

We talked about why so few women decide to enter into politics and the reason why only a small number of them succeed with Milica Antić Gaber, PhD, who has been working on the subject of females in politics for many years now. She also collaborates in many research projects. Among other things, she actively created the OPENN (Obtaining Political Equality by New Names) project, within which regular meetings of female mayors have been held since 2015.