Gender analysis in the 2021 municipal elections - Do development and urbanism influence the greater political participation of women?

This CESI (Center for Education, Counselling and Research) study analyses the gender composition of candidates, voters and elected officials in Croatia's 2021 local elections, examining whether women's political participation differs across the urban-rural and developed-underdeveloped dichotomies. Using a development-index calculation, the study sampled the first 10 local self-government units from each development group, further classified according to administrative and numerical criteria.

The study tested the hypothesis, drawn from post-election statistics, that women's political participation would be greater in urban and developed areas than in rural and less developed ones. Findings show that women's local political participation is more complex than the urban-rural and developed-underdeveloped dichotomies suggest: these criteria were not an adequate predictor of women's political participation, contradicting the initial hypothesis.

The study notes that limited resources for the analysis required restricting the sample to the first 10 local self-government units per development group, a constraint that shaped how the hypothesis could be tested.