Politics and Women reports 2014, by Dr Melanie Sully

Women in parliament or on the outside? Research and Events here compiled by Prof Dr Melanie Sully

•Poland has female Prime Minister, September 2014 see WSJ Speaker of Parliament becomes Prime Minister and will be replaced by former Foreign Minister Sikorski thus diminishing the number of female parliamentary Speakers in the EU to 6. In Austria the informal decision was taken this Summer to replace a female Speaker with a woman. But the former Marshal of the Sejm (Speaker) goes on to be PM. This article comments on the surprise choice of her new Foreign Minister who apparently is not known to speak English. On what basis are Ministers chosen? This seems just a mystery in Poland as elsewhere. But as ever it is based on party cohesion and power. Now 32% of the cabinet including the PM are female including also the Minister of Interior.

• View the all party parliament group publication ""Improving Parliament" UK, July 2014

• March 30, 2014 the first female Mayor of Paris is elected bringing the numbers to 5 (18%) in the 28 EU capital cities along with Madrid, Sofia, Luxembourg and Warsaw.

•The Austrian Association of Municipalities holds official data on numbers of female Mayors as well as reports and their Website has regular interviews with women in local politics
For International Women's Day 2014 the Association did a breakdown of the number of female mayors in Austria as well as deputies looking at reasons for poor representation in local structures. "Weltfrauentag: Immer noch nur wenige Bürgermeisterinnen", 7.3. 2014 and also an article "Viele Frauen trauen sich das Amt nicht zu" by the Association of Austrian Municipalities of 7.3. 2014.

•For the data and analysis on European level, see this Report on decision-making, politics and gender

•Also the European Commission (Justice) regularly updates tables on women in local, regional, national and European politics, - consult this link on local politics and connect to others

•Historical data and comprehensive information on women in politics can be found in this Report from the Austrian Federal Chancellery

•Also in the UK the question of relatively poor female representation in local structures is an issue, see The Guardian March 2014

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