With the dust settling on this year’s local council elections, Malta now has half as many women mayors as it did in 2019, despite a slight uptick in the number of women in local councils.

Only seven of Malta’s 68 local councils are now led by a female mayor. This includes the town of Birkirkara, where Desirei Grech was appointed interim mayor after a controversial stalemate in the council over who was to serve as mayor.

Aside from Birkirkara, Għargħur, Mqabba, Santa Luċija, Xewkija, Żejtun and Żurrieq will also have a woman at the helm.

When the previous local council elections were held in 2019, 11 localities had elected a woman to lead the council,

Part of this is down to women who were in the mayor’s seat five years ago having left local council politics to aim higher..

In Bormla, mayor Alison Zerafa Civelli left her post in 2022 to stand for the general election, today serving in Cabinet as a parliamentary secretary.

Alison Zerafa Civelli, once a Bormla mayor, being sworn into Cabinet in 2022. File photo: Matthew Mirabelli

Davina Sammut Hili, Floriana mayor in 2019, and Mosta mayor Romilda Baldacchino Zarb took a similar path, stepping down from their councils to successfully stand for election in the 2022 general election.

Maria Sara Vella Gafá, elected mayor of Gudja in 2019, went one step further, trying her hand at a bid for the European Parliament last month, eventually falling short.

Meanwhile, after a series of disagreements with her party, Naxxar mayor Anne Marie Muscat Fenech Adami announced that she would step away from politics to focus on her family. Just months earlier, she had been nominated by the government to serve as Malta’s non-resident ambassador to Bulgaria.

Six councils previously led by women now led by a man

But while six local councils have seen their stewardship pass from the hands of a woman to a man in this past election, only two councils – Xewkija and Mqabba – have gone in the opposite direction, with Simona Refalo, daughter of agriculture minister Anton, named Xewkija's new mayor and Grace Marie Zerafa assuming the mayorship in Mqabba.

Simona Refalo, newly-elected mayor of Xewkija. File photo: Chris Sant Fournier

Five other councils who were led by a woman in 2019 find themselves in the same situation.

The remaining 56 councils were, and remain, led by men.

More female councillors, Għargħur Malta’s most female council

More broadly, fewer than a third of all councillors elected to serve during this legislature will be women, with 132 women winning a seat during the election, 14 more than in 2019.

Female representation has increased slightly across several localities, with 25 of Malta’s councils now having more women sitting on the council than they did five years ago.

Still, in 21 other towns, the number of women on the council has dipped.

While several towns – Dingli, Għajnsielem, Luqa, Mtarfa, Pietà and San Lawrenz – have elected all-male councils, Malta is yet to have its first all-female local council.

Għargħur comes closest, with four of its five local councillors now being women.

Several of Malta’s larger local councils remain male-dominated, or have become even more so after last month’s elections.

Birkirkara, Sliema and Mosta now have one less female councillor than they did five years ago, as does Żabbar.

But some other towns buck this trend.

Five of St Paul’s Bay 13 councillors are now women, up from three in 2019, while the number of female councillors in Marsascala doubled from 2 to 4, as the council gained two new seats for this year’s election.

Malta lags behind on gender equality in political decision-making

Malta has long struggled with female representation in decision-making positions.

The European Institute for Gender Equality’s 2023 index found that gender inequality in Malta is most pronounced in the “domain of power”, particularly in terms of political decision-making.

The trend has continued this year, with Malta only electing one woman to the European Parliament in last month’s MEP elections, and just a meagre nine woman standing for election in the first place.

A controversial gender quota mechanism which came into force in the 2022 general elections brought about the election of 12 women to Malta’s parliament. The mechanism hopes to up female representation in parliament, but critics argue that the measure is anti-democratic.

Correction July 19, 2024: A previous version stated that six, not seven councils are now led by women.