FACTBase Bulletin 44 - Still a Boys Club? Greater Participation and Representativeness of Local Government in Metropolitan Perth

This Bulletin provides a historical and spatial analysis of the gender profile of candidates and elected councillors across the Perth metropolitan region.

Key Findings

• All tiers of governance in Australia are relatively demographically homogenous, where local government, being the level of governance closest to the local community, is expected to be the most demographically diverse.
• In Western Australia, it is more likely for the metropolitan local government areas to have higher levels of female elected members than non-metropolitan regions.
• In the Greater Perth region, there were 14 local government areas which had female participation levels between 30-39% and were dispersed throughout the region.
• No local governments in the Greater Perth region had 50/50 gender participation rates, however Bassendean, Cockburn and Claremont had rates equal to or greater than 40%.
• Overall, women are under-represented relative to their proportion of population in all levels of governance, yet in local governance, women are “over represented” relative to the number of females who contest to the elections.